Everything has turned into a virtual reality. Once upon a time, having friends, finding jobs, even showing friends pictures, required some form of physical contact. Now everything can be done online, taking out a lot of the interpersonal communication. That’s the topic my blog will be delving into; I plan to dissect a couple of different mediums and show how what used to be more of a physical reality has turned into a virtual reality.
The first medium, only the easiest, is Facebook. The intent of Facebook was to bring people closer together and to help people find each other (whether it be long lost friends or just past classmates). It’s interesting to see though how much the term “friendship” has shifted since the advent of this social media website. I remember several years ago (before Facebook was invented) where my friends were people I saw on a regular basis and hung out with, acquaintances were just people I knew and waved to, and then everyone else just existed. Now with Facebook, friends include… well everyone. My one friend Sarah has over 1,000 people on her friend list. When I talked with her recently I asked how a few people were doing and she had no idea. Come to find out, she hasn’t talked to anyone since our senior year of high school! Her friends range from old high school classmates, to friend’s boyfriends (or in my case she’s friends with all of my ex boyfriends), to random people she only met a couple of times. I noticed though a lot of people are in similar positions. They’ll ‘friend’ classmates, people they met at parties, coworkers, basically anyone. This has completely shifted the idea of friendship. What used to be in essence a physical reality, has turned into a virtual reality.
I’m not saying all virtual realities are bad. Social media is a good way to connect with people, it’s an excellent place for networking, and it makes it nice to be able to break those boundaries. But it does have negative effects too. Having the virtual world of friendship has affected how we interact with people in person. Being able to say anything online sometimes makes it harder to say the same things to that person’s face. Or the whole idea of Facebook stalking, where you know everything about a person that they may not know that you know, also can be a negative effect.
It’s just interesting to see how the physical realm of friendship has transformed into a virtual reality. And with the constant change in social media and the addition of
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