How many times have you been patronised by an offline person who assumes that anything done online is frivolous and somehow not ‘real’?
Comments such as: ‘I have *real* friends’ or the classic Boomer complaint of ‘PHONE BAD!’, are all too common.
I spend a lot of my time in what I think of as my ‘digital neighbourhood’. The people living with me day to day are the people on my social media. They are real people, my real friends, living real lives alongside mine, we just happen to be on different parts of the blue rock.
I know a couple of my closest physical neighbours to say hello to, but ironically I get most of my interaction with even these traditional neighbours through our area’s Facebook group.
In-person communication and (ew) phone calls are often touted as being some kind of moral standard, usually by the same people who share this type of awful content on their Facebook, using their phone. But that’s different. Somehow.
Smart phones are apparently demonic devices that stop your kids interacting with you. Maybe your kids don’t want to talk to you because you’re a terrible, judgemental person, Sandra.
For me, being in a digital neighbourhood gives the same ‘ambient knowledge’ about people I would get from existing in the same meatspace as someone else. You know, the stuff you pick up without really registering: where they’re going on holiday, how the kids are getting on, what their pets look like, how much they hate their job… things that give you a sense of belonging to a community.
Also, digital neighbourhoods have the ultimate advantage – you can make people leave yours by simply deleting them. Clickety-click.