The beautiful whole of you

Two groups of puffins look at each other while standing.

I want to see the beautiful whole of you.

That’s it, that’s the post.

It probably needs some backstory, I’m guessing, because I can hear your confusion from out there in the ether, through the tubes, between the slippery sliding of ones and zeroes that increasingly dominate our lives. What is she on about?

The way we were

I was an early adopter—no, too far back. Let’s skip to the early 2000s when social media blossomed from blogs, Usenet, ICQ, and AIM and grew into the virtual town square. I loved it. I loved the rich friendships that I developed on forums. The vital and life-altering distributed discussions in a zillion comment sections introduced me to typography, accessibility, design thinking, intersectionality, systematic oppression, web standards, XKCD, Brain Pickings (now The Marginalian), knitting, guilds, knitting guilds, anti-racism, and countless other ideas and resources.

Digital renaissance

This digital renaissance continued through the early days of Twitter and Facebook. Many of those online relationships transitioned to meatspace when we discovered we were nearby, in the same city, or, once, across the street from each other. Some online relationships were spiced with in-person meetups through travel. Some of my IRL friendships deepened with online interactions, and we built a hybrid network that has persisted through life changes.

Pocket friends

I started jokingly referring to the people I texted or engaged with online as my “pocket friends” because no matter what happened, they were a text, a comment, a tweet away. The immediacy of a friend-on-demand got us equally through car accidents, family drama, travel hiccups, emergency resources, and boring grocery trips.

Not all sunshine and lollipops

Online relationships had their challenges—flame wars, heated discussions, missteps, and ignorance—and social groups formed and collapsed with an intensity that equalled real life. We were in our homes, at our computers, talking and sharing with spouses and children while texting, instant messaging, and posting in forums and blogs.

Early hybrid

In some ways, it was more intimate than real life, having access to someone’s private thoughts through text, connecting with each other from far-flung locations. Things that were difficult to say aloud were easier to text somehow, for good and for bad. It felt like we were having private conversations, even though they were in the public space. Virtual life and meatspace intermixed easily and regularly.

A hand-drawn puffin is flying up toward the top right of the screen.

Connections felt real, were real. The democratization of communication seemed to be getting fulfilled, and we were co-authoring the rules of interaction.

Pandemic

It wasn’t the pandemic’s fault.

In the years between the advent of social media and the pandemic, corporations, algorithms, smartphones, and intense monetization (O’Neil, 2017; Fisher, 2022) invaded the web, and the nature of online discourse shifted. Forums and blogs collapsed as Twitter and Facebook dominated the conversation and became de facto third places for many and started controlling the conversation and gatekeeping our relationships (Fisher, 2022).

Freebooting

Sure, you could link to a funny blog or an artist’s website, but social media algorithms determined if anyone saw it (O’Neil, 2017; Fisher, 2022). At the same time, the good parts were rapidly distilled into memes, stripped of authorship, and spread like gossip too rapidly for long-form consideration, a corrupted and monetized game of Broken Telephone.

Social media corruption

When video and photography (Vine, Instagram) joined the party, Twitter and Facebook absorbed them, too; slurping them up into the dopamine machine and amping up the algorithms kept eyeballs glued to their platforms (Fisher, 2022).

Bad actors, trolls, and bots proliferated. Outrage became the currency, usurping connection. The virtual town square became a hunting ground dominated by advertisers, influencers, and foreign agents.

Instagram developed a face that jumped to real life, and we started to hear warning cries about an epidemic of loneliness on the same services that were causing it.

The cure for loneliness

A single puffing stands in 3/4 view, looking at the viewer.

Over the last year, loneliness among adults has become newsworthy, confirming what we suspected: Loneliness makes you sick and miserable. The pandemic made it impossible to ignore that loneliness was an epidemic. Ernst et al. (2022) found little empirical evidence that the pandemic made loneliness significantly worse, whereas O’Sullivan et al. (2021) identified the underlying vulnerabilities that lead to isolation, such as lack of money and not having a reliable in-person social network. Isolation leads to loneliness.

Confounding things, the societal shifts during the pandemic revealed the significant hidden benefits of working from home for some and the hidden dangers for others. Being freed from microaggressions, bias, physical challenges, long commutes, and schedule challenges slammed face-first into the physical and mental impacts of isolation and the more complex societal implications of the fun-house-mirror-distortions of online-only interactions.

What to do?

Oh, I’m so glad you asked! Get offline. It is practically impossible to do wholesale, but we can get offline more often.

Catherine Pearson, in the New York Times, interviewed Dr. Marisa Franco, a psychologist who studies friendship, about her book Platonic. Summing up Dr. Franco’s advice: believe you are friend material, then get out there in person and do it on purpose, for a purpose, regularly.

In person, on purpose, for a purpose, regularly

Deceptively simple, that! Like eat well, sleep well, move your body, it’s up there on the list of advice we may want to dismiss but we know deep down, “this is the Way.”

Other researchers (Steiger et al., 2023; Ross, 2024) confirm: in person, on purpose, for a purpose, regularly. James Clear (the author of Atomic Habits) emphasizes how small, purposeful shifts can transform your life. Small changes, one thing at a time, every change toward your goal. If the goal is to build connections and make new friends, take one action toward that goal. Reach out to someone, accept an invitation, meet in person. Then do it again.

commUnity

Speaking of meeting in person, on purpose, for a purpose, regularly, I had an idea. Many communications professionals work in isolation and under high stress. While there are large professional communications organizations focused on professional development, accreditation, career growth, and outward signs of success, these can be isolating in a different way when you’re looking for connection, not badges on your sash.

What if, hear me out, what if communicators just…talked to each other? Without screens, without worrying about the impact of social media, without transactional expectations, and without all the armour we wear to engage with the world.

The beautiful whole of you

A few communications professionals, in a room at the public library, talking about life as people—in person, on purpose, for a purpose, regularly. What else may we share? I want to hear your ideas! Your struggles and your challenges. I want to celebrate your wins, big and small. I want to do it monthly. This is me reaching out.

I want to see the beautiful whole of you.

Drop me a line at suzanne@commUnitykw.ca (or if you prefer web forms like a delightful weirdo, you can get notified about upcoming meetups!) and let’s make some plans. Together.

References

Ernst, M., Niederer, D., Werner, A. M., Czaja, S. J., Mikton, C., Ong, A. D., Rosen, T., Brähler, E., & Beutel, M. E. (2022). Loneliness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review with meta-analysis. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001005

Fisher, M. (2022). The chaos machine: The inside story of how social media rewired our minds and our world. Little, Brown and Company.

O’Neil, C. (2017). Weapons of math destruction. Crown.

O’Sullivan, R., Burns, A., Leavey, G., Leroi, I., Burholt, V., Lubben, J., Holt-Lunstad, J., Victor, C., Lawlor, B., Vilar-Compte, M., Perissinotto, C. M., Tully, M. A., Sullivan, M. P., Rosato, M., Power, J. M., Tiilikainen, E., & Prohaska, T. R. (2021). Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on loneliness and social isolation: A multi-country study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021(18), 9982. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18199982

Ross, E. M. (2024, October 25). What is causing our epidemic of loneliness and how can we fix it? Harvard. https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing-our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it

Stieger, S., Lewetz, D., & Willinger, D. (2023). Face-to-face more important than digital communication for mental health during the pandemic. Scientific Reports, 13(8022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34957-4

Links in this post (in order)

The beautiful whole of you