How to Make Friends On The Internet
A young man walks into a large pool party wearing a stiff suit. The host is nowhere to be seen, and he doesn’t know anyone there. Guests of a wide variety of ages mill around, talking and laughing with their friends, gaping at another guest’s party tricks, clumping near the food and drinks. He clears his throat near the entrance.
“Hi!” he says to no one in particular. “I own a nightclub downtown called Lorem. Maybe we could go there after this?”
No one has heard him, so no one pays him any mind. He walks around, listening in to conversations and taking mental notes: some are animatedly discussing Orange is the New Black, others are talking about their work, and many seem to be good friends. The man in the stiff suit chooses a group of fashionable young people waiting in line for the bathroom and stands on the periphery.
“Hi,” he tries again. “You guys seem like you like to party! I own a nightclub downtown called Lorem. Would you like to check it out?” The group shoots him a weird look, makes noncommital noises, and resume their previous conversation recounting last weekend’s antics while positioning their bodies to block him out.
Undeterred, the young man in the stiff suit leaves the party and calls a skywriter. “No, I don’t watch the show,” he says in a huff to the person on the other end. “Can’t you just make something up??”
Moments later, guests look up at the sky to see, written in large loopy vapor trails:
Lorem is the New Black!! #PRISON!
Most of the guests are slightly bewildered, except for the people previously talking about Orange is the New Black: they look mildly disgusted. No one approaches the man in the stiff suit, but the fashionable young people are whispering and pointing at him now, looking suspicious. He leaves, having drummed up no new business.
That night, as he gets ready for bed, his husband asks how the day went. “I really gave it my best shot,” he said. “But they just didn’t get it. I’m not sure how to fix it. Should I rename the club Ipsum? Do I hire a new skywriter? I tried everything.”
He sighs dramatically.
“Kids and their pool parties these days — they just don’t know how to make connections like we used to.”
Christina Xu is an organizational designer, ethnographer, and enabler based in New York. She is sad that people believe online and offline spaces to be so inherently different that they don’t think to use basic social skills.
