what do you do when every person is every person’s penpal?
In the summer of 2007, I was sitting in my home, at my father’s new computer, waiting nervously for what was back then the most important ping of my life.
I was waiting for my crush to come online on MSN messenger.
The computer was brand new, the CPU was the size of a fridge and all in all, it had an extraordinary number of buttons. I had helped Appa assemble it and my reward had been a personal account. I had immediately set my cursor to a tiny blinking dinosaur that I trundled up and down the Windows XP hillock whenever I was bored. But, we are digressing. My crush — MSN messenger.
PING!
His tiny messenger icon glowed green and I experienced a natural rush of endorphins — hormones that in the years to come, Silicon Valley would get obsessed with mining more of using advertisements and algorithms. But 13 years ago, my entire class was just learning the novel experience of digital relationships. We had just barely waded into the quagmire of teen-hood but we had already discovered the joyous duality of hanging out with each other in person and then rushing home to privately incubate other “special” bonds. We could share glitter stickers, stupid jokes, and talk one-on-one without being teased endlessly. It felt like a miraculous addition to what was already an incredibly fun playtime. We borrowed each other’s emojis and sent each other new words we’d never said aloud: BRB, LOL, TC, CYA! Our uptake of internet lingo was of course much faster than our French or Hindi school lessons much to the chagrin of adults around us. But most of all, it felt like we were getting to know each other in a way that was impossible at a playground.
We were having conversations that you could only have in letters. In short, we were discovering the fruits of pen-palship without having to do the groundwork of identifying a stranger to write to. Yet, these conversations were anchored to the part of your house where your PC sat. Outside of it, life carried on its own pace. We played in the same parks, went to each other’s for dinner, called each other’s homes endlessly (racking up phone bills and annoying parents who were expecting actual phone appointments). The internet was just a new playground for us — it only felt like an enrichment of already dramatic school life. How ironic then, all these years later, for so many of us, the internet is now the ONLY playground left.
I don’t mean in just the COVID era of today. Even before that, we were keeping up with our childhood best friends via e-mail. Our phones buzzed and beeped, we were now texting each other. A few notifications later, we could now even make new friends on the internet. And as of yesterday? We got to know our friend — who has a million followers — was pregnant through her Instagram story.
While it is impossible to ignore the in-your-face-ness of social media, I still struggle to come to terms with certain new realities. Having a strong network of friends in person is crucial for mental resilience, studies say. But what about a strong internet network of friends?
As we move from city to continent, scouring the farthest reaches of the world, we have only the internet to help us hold on to each other. And unlike letter-writing pen pals, it has allowed us to even share the mundane.
“I’m thinking of buying these earrings”
Zwoop
<Downloading Image>
“Go for it! I also like the blue one behind this!”
What are you eating? What are you wearing? What are you looking at? Questions that I don’t have to ask anymore. The internet that you have fed answers me automatically. As much as I enjoy writing, I am unable to make up my mind whether this trade-off between letters and social media that we have all unconsciously made is a good one. While a letter has thought and effort put into it, it leaves out the flagrant normalcy of daily life. We are forced to sieve through decisions, actions, thought and opinions to pick the ones most insightful, the ones that will leave us looking good if found, the ones that will ensure further communication.
On the internet, you are allowed to be mundane — even relatable as of 2020. No one expects a high brow over-arching thesis on the influence of Canadian geography on the psychological freedom of your mind (though I wouldn’t mind if you sent me that, Ammu). Moreover, pen-palship dictated that you were writing a letter to someone. Social media dictates that you receive letters from everyone. In writing a letter, you’re forced to use language specifically and if you don’t have the words for it, you’re at a loss. There is of course the important consideration of how vulnerable can you be and the physical permanency of it. With the internet, these seem more distant. Of course, someone can take a screenshot but in the spur of the moment, that is not the first consideration. And then, if you want to say “I miss you”, you always have the option of just sending them a meme. Because let’s be honest, what else are memes good for?
“Ha. Funny.”
Share
Image subtext: <this made me think of u. and us. would like us to laugh together again>
I am almost certain that the existence of memes hinges heavily on the friendships we’ve kindled in real life and had to leave behind when we moved. In that way, the internet is just a nostalgia pimp — for things that have happened or things that you know will be a memory (see Dès Vu for a brilliant film on the same). The internet has also enabled the migration of unknown magnitude. Without the internet, would you so quickly move to Australia to study just so that you could spend more time with your boyfriend? Maybe, maybe not. With the internet, this decision is at least less difficult to make. You’re leaving your family but you’re also taking them with you — in your pocket.
However, during the pandemic, the importance of an online network of friends has once more come to the foreground. Despite the limitations, the simple joys of Zoom banter, virtual jam sessions, playing online games like Skribble.io or Codenames, leave you feeling nourished albeit no replacement for the real deal. It leaves you more resilient to tackle the variety of anxieties you may have had to deal with this year. But even without a pandemic, four friends in different corners of the world would hardly find it fair to compare a once in 2 years long weekend together versus a weekly video call. In friendship, presence is what makes it matter. Availability and communication are the biggest gifts of a digital relationship — but like a double-edged sword, they are also its detriment.
I’ve come to think of my online identity as also having 2 facets: a seen and an unseen one. The seen facet posts on IG for the world to see. The unseen one is busy being cringe, politically incorrect, ignorant, and completely foolish on WhatsApp or other forms of text. I’ve devised that, mathematically, when the ratio of these 2 facets (seen:unseen) is less than 1 is when all my relationships are at their happiest. By this, I mean that my friends get more screen time but only via personal communication. The texts, the snaps, the stupid filters are filed away in Direct Messages, Reply-To’s, and group calls. Sure, an occasional screenshot of a video call may leak through the veil and enter the world of seen performance but mostly the conversations and connection are closely guarded. I have cordoned off this sort of networking from my IG with an almost animal ferocity. If, as a teen, I had an offline and online world, I now have a private online and a public online world. This division comes with its own challenges of course. I mentioned earlier that availability is a cornerstone for friendships — real or reel — but how do you support someone and show your care via a medium that makes serious conversation impossible? When a close friend finally woke up to the realization that her gas-lighting ex was an absolute piece of trash, this was my response:
This was the only way I could, mid-brushing my teeth, some 6 time zones away, convey how much I wanted to hug, kiss, celebrate, cry with relief for her. But what happens when this delicate ratio tips? Suddenly, posting 50 ugly pictures of my best friend is somehow now the only socially acceptable way to celebrate her birthday. Why does a public declaration of love supersede a private one? Whenever I’ve had a handful of marvelous achievements I am extremely proud of, I am not immune to the general sense of deflation when it does not get validated by a hundred-odd people with incomprehensible handles like @bikes_mahogany_3354 that I will probably never even meet.
There are further complications. When the ratio is equal, i.e. you share privately as much as you do publicly, the question of “why” is inevitable. Why did you message me that you have a fever if 2 seconds later you were going to post a story of yourself in bed anyway?
And if your narratives are entirely different, that provides a different kind of dissonance. How does one digest these alternative narratives of others and your own? I think, personally, a skewed ratio where I learn more about you from your Instagram than your personal contact with me is the most difficult to comprehend. It feels both depleting and engaging. Here, despite our busy lives, I can at least keep up with what your highlights are but here, despite our busy lives, we are neither able, available, or attempting to share anything personal. You are no longer my pen pal. You are everybody’s pen pal.
To quiet some of this discord, I decided to mute people. It was a little experiment that I did long back but completely forgot about. When I came to, I realized that I had missed entire narratives being played out, missed out on both the extraordinarily mundane, but also the absolutely delightful. But — every private interaction with this person was precious. I remembered each and every time we spoke. I got personalized memes, more ugly filter selfies, candids, reading links, and so much more. The constraints of interacting via a single, private, internet app seemed so much like a friendship upgrade to me. It was the lack thereof that serviced the more. It was just like being back on MSN Messenger.
Things got so good that at that point I wanted to say to everyone I am truly close to:
can you & I unfollow each other so that we can actually talk?
I am not done unspooling this complex web of social online, offline, private, public relationships. As I try to unravel it for myself, more questions, pros, and cons surface. I am already distracted by the impact of algorithms, the debate on social media addiction, conversations on self-presentation, an excellent essay on growing up with ONLY public relationships. As I navigate all of this though, I do want to leave you with a thought that has occupied me all week:
While research strongly advocates for having a healthy social support system, even going to the extent of concluding that the absence can alter brain function and increase mental and physical health risks, I am not sure of how much research has been done on the virtual networks we all depend on. With travel, work, and now even the possibility of working from home, our social lives are suspended in remoteness in both senses of the word. An accessible world like ours means re-imagining close friendships and examining the extreme reliance on the internet and their relevance to our resilience. How do we conduct these relationships as more and more algorithms melt, mold, and dictate our choices?
Or, as I have titled it, what do you do when every person is every person’s penpal?
Let me know.
Random Note: The internet can be a despicable and vile place but it can also be a place where we try to do our best to be there for each other. The best example of that that I found this week is the @nearnessproject or https://www.nearnessproject.com/.
