No L(aughing)OL Matter

Nothing makes me feel more like the impoverished, boring, tasteless student that I am than the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times. With their catchy headlines and “Sex in the City”-style humor, the writers transport me, albeit virtually, into the world of glitz and glamour that is New York. This Tuesday, however, embedded deep into one gloriously shimmering write-up, was an insignificant, tiny, yet deeply resonant statement.

On the surface, the article was typical—it dealt with the woes that come with making conversation at high-profile cocktail parties. The writer claimed that it is harder for people today to strike up conversations than ever before. This he attributed to the growing use of “reality TV, blogging, and YouTube.”

I would have thought that the above-mentioned activities would have served, if anything, to make us more outgoing and social. But closer introspection led me to this observation—it’s not that we aren’t talking; it’s that we aren’t conversing. Either we talk so much that a two-way conversation degenerates into a unidirectional monologue, or we are so consumed by other means of communication that, when it comes to talking face-to-face, we turn mum.

Take online diaries, for example. The content of an average LiveJournal entry is, simply put, an individual’s outpouring of personal worries and difficulties. The “comments” feature, which makes a feeble attempt at promoting feedback, is used merely as a means for fawning friends to sympathize with the self-consumed writer. This “you-love-my-blog-and-I’ll-love-yours” approach leaves no room for conversation, argument and discussion. Take these blog writers out of their virtual setting and into a dinner party and they’ll either repeat their mastered skills of talking about themselves or be completely lost. The diehard LJ loyalists out there will no doubt defend religiously maintained blogs by arguing that, being online diaries, blog entries are supposed to be about whatever you are thinking of at the time, be it politics, sports, culture or you.

Why then is this scene an all-too-familiar one here at Berkeley: a class of over 400 silent, dispassionate students, many maniacal bloggers, egged on passionately by an enthusiastic professor struggling to extract a semblance of class participation, but all to no avail. You pick the classes you go to, battle rain and shine to go, and yet, you have nothing to contribute to a discussion. Why?

Our generation is the first to grow up with the Internet, and we are only just beginning to realize its influence on our lives. Has the Internet marred our social and behavioral etiquette? Do we feel safer expressing ourselves over a medium that shields our identities and helps avoid confrontation? Or are we so sated with virtual self-expression that we simply aren’t capable of holding a conversation or participating in a group discussion?

Maybe the Internet itself has become a setting for conversation. Instant messaging tools, for example, are an extremely popular means of communication. But I would hardly call a two-hour interaction that is devoid of real commitment a conversation. Any instant messaging service provides you with a wide range of options to abruptly withdraw from a conversation, or even avoid one, if you so wish. Everything from away messages, to invisibility and even the over-used “BRB” helps you simply disappear from a conversation when it gets too boring, or when you’re done talking about yourself.

Unfortunately, in the real world, there is no “exit immediately” option. When you meet someone face-to-face, you are forced to not just talk but converse, sometimes for a substantial amount of time. Granted, this is terrifying. Without the Internet within reach, you could mistakenly ask about a relationship that has just fallen through, forget a birthday or put yourself in some other embarrassing foot-in-mouth position.

But that is the magic of a conversation. It forces you to combine all your senses and see actual emotional reactions instead of artificial emoticons. And though letting your guard down on all fronts might make you long for a delete button, you’ll come to love the raw beauty in an impromptu conversation.

With that said, that’s enough talking from me.

Tags: