Social networking without a parachute
As a result of 31 years of fine-tuning my own social awkwardness, the explosion and importance of online social networking feels like I’m going skydiving without a parachute.
I’m one of the biggest advocates for building community both online and offline, but I’m also hesitant to do it for myself. I’ve always believed in being as authentic as possible and making friends “virally” has caused me plenty of anxiety.
Then again, I was the girl who wore a lot of black and didn’t go to her senior prom and who snubbed sororities in college in order to take 18 credits per semester, double major, and graduate early, and who’s blogged for two years under a pseudonym. I’m also the girl who struggles to speak at mixers and who prefers talking about well-coded networks and load balancing instead of networking. See the pattern?
There’s an entire social practice in being counter-social norms, which is ironic, because the act of being “counter” is supposed to be the same as being different. But in order to be different, you end up sharing another set of ideologies with a separate set of people. Eventually, you’ll develop a need to be counter to them too, and it goes on and on.
Being an individual is increasingly difficult when you start to examine what it is that keeps you “different” from everyone else and you accept that sometimes your own social constructions keep you more separate that you ever intended to be. In my case, it’s shown me how much I’d like to share “sameness” in the hopes of creating great friendships and expand the world in which I live.
My stats across all of my social networks, except maybe my LinkedIn account, are modest and are the result of toe-dipping instead of plunging. Most days it feels like I’m opening up an empty yearbook, and I’ve already got a stack of those in my memory box. The social web has turned my personal life outwards, and in my case it’s important to embrace a number of things about it that I would usually shrug off in my desire to be different from everyone else.
I feel like I’m capitulating, but I’m really not, because being in a new city and having spent my first year here very much alone, independent, and disoriented to how New Yorkers work, play, and live, I’m actually starting to wish that I could network outside my comfort zone.
Social networking does feel like skydiving without a parachute, but maybe there’s the possibility of bouncing into other great people instead of completely crashing.