See, one of the practical upshots of social media is that, theoretically, it's easy to stay in constant contact with people everywhere. BUT:
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Replying to @fozmeadows
No matter how wide our digital social circles, or how sincerely we care about lots of different people, there's a limit to our engagement.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
There are only so many hours in the day, the week, the month. Even for the most extroverted among us, access to ppl doesn't = total upkeep.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
We check in & keep track as best we can, but often - I think, for many of us - there's an anxiety about forgetting; that we're bad friends.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Simultaneously, there's anxiety about US being ignored or forgotten which preys on both cognitive dissonance and our own self-doubt. Viz:
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Either we know our own good reasons for belated emails etc but assume malice/dislike in others, or fear we didn't try hard enough to matter.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
This can easily become paralyzing: there's so many people we could potentially be talking to, it often feels like we're letting them down.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
But listen: I'm here to tell you that's bullshit. Even if you had all the time of a letter-writing aristocrat in 18th C. Britain, bullshit.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Firstly, our social nets now are so much wider & more varied in terms of the type of contact/connection they involve, it's unprecedented.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
Think about the digital/emotional codeswitching necessary to, for instance, go from talking to relatives on FB vs fandom buddies on tumblr.
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It's not the same thing in practice, because it's a different type of written communication for a different type of emotional content.
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Replying to @fozmeadows
So beating yourself up because one type of connection is easy, so why can't you just do the others, too? It's not you: they are different!
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Replying to @fozmeadows
At the same time, we connect with so many different people that keeping in daily or weekly contact with all of them is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE.
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