I can look at you and have a conversation with you, and of course this is great, but hidden between the silences are glances at a mobile phone, holding multiple stray conversations that may mean more to you than the person standing in your vicinity.
Our importance is never quite set out in an obvious manner. Our relevance to others can be so variable - oh, my best friend just logged in, this is important, bare with me.
How long have we been straying from reality to talk closer to the screen, our focus diluted by simultaneous yet absurdly contrasting conversations. I could be breaking up with someone whilst quoting TV shows to someone else. I could be telling jokes to one and laying shit down to another.
Our social webs are becoming ever so intricate. I think this is what scares me, really. I don't know what to trust at face level when there is no face to perceive. I want to know where I stand in someone's eyes. I want to know that I am not just a distraction, or that I am not just an obstacle standing in the way of something else. Someone else.
I am not naive enough to think this sort of social complication is new. But it is current. We can be holding a private message, a public post, and a face-to-face all at the same time, and from there you have to wonder where our attention is lying, and whether attention means the same as it used to.
We'll Skype now, it's free, but you are not looking my way, you're fiddling with something, typing something out (but not to me, we are speaking through microphones) and I'm halfway through what I thought was an interesting anecdote but I can see you don't really know what I'm saying as I purposefully misspoke several times and there is no indication of any recognition of the humorous parts. Perhaps I am not funny. Perhaps I hold no interest.
I am fully aware that to hold attention is a harder thing now, I can hardly keep my own eyes focused on something that interests me, but people should still be given full attention - while we still make the effort to look each other in the eye, we need to keep this going.
Online gaming has allowed 'hang out' to mean speaking over the internet while pressing endless combinations of buttons. Befriending has meant following an online persona.
It would just be nice to know that there is a feeling of uniqueness, and not of being one in a mass crowd vying for attention. We shouldn't have to fight to be heard. Our voices shouldn't be shouting so loudly, as noise increases noise.
Maybe there is a point here being missed altogether. Perhaps we just need to slow down and take a look around, find out who we really should be speaking to. Who means a lot to you? Let them know.
It's not about speaking to as many people as possible. It's not about spreading your connections as far as you can. It should be about the group of people close to you, that stir you.
We should not be representing our online personas. We should be representing an organic individual. Computers can make hundreds of connections with little thought, we should be focusing on the few that matter.
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