The Truth about Facebook and Twitter

One of favorite things to do when I’m out in pub­lic is peo­ple watch­ing, I love  guess­ing the sto­ries hap­pen­ing around me, most of us do…it’s kinda hard to resist. We can’t help eaves­drop­ping on con­ver­sa­tions in pub­lic places, it’s a way for us to feel part of a greater whole and a rather sur­rep­ti­tious way to con­nect with other humans.

Con­ver­sa­tions heard

This past Sun­day, Father’s Day, we went out for brunch along with every­body else and their fathers…lots of fam­i­lies, from large and to pre­na­tal. While wait­ing in line for the restau­rant to open, I noticed that while the larger groups inter­acted, albeit, on a sub­dued scale,  inter­ac­tion within the smaller  groups was very lim­ited. I guessed that this was caused by our rel­a­tive close phys­i­cal prox­im­ity to each other.

How­ever,  once we were all seated, the anx­i­ety was replaced by the mur­mur of con­ver­sa­tions. To our left, sat a young expect­ing cou­ple ( I’ll call them Sue and Bob), Bob was engaged with the Sun­day paper and the very preg­nant Sue was busy try­ing to get com­fort­able. To our right, sat another young cou­ple ( Jody, Jack and baby Bobby), only this one was now a fam­ily, their infant son Bobby bliss­fully a sleep between them. The next table over sat a group made up of young and old, all, judg­ing from their looks, mem­bers of the same fam­ily. Other large and small groups filled the out­door din­ing area.

After our order was taken, I started read­ing the Sun­day paper, while halfway lis­ten­ing to the con­ver­sa­tions going on around me. The expect­ing cou­ple, Sue and Bob were work­ing out whether to re-examine an impend­ing four day road trip, while the new fam­ily( Jody, Jack and baby Bobby) to our right was dis­cussing details about their recent move into a house.

Over at one of the large groups, the patri­arch, Tom,  was shar­ing the details of his com­ing retire­ment with his daugh­ter Becky, while the youngest fam­ily mem­ber John was dis­cussing his plans for the sum­mer with one of his sis­ter in-laws Elvira.

A few tables away, a group of four were cau­tiously engag­ing in con­ver­sa­tion with an older guy who looked like their father, Jim Bob. There was an “I did my best” together with an apol­ogy fol­lowed by tears com­ing from the younger of the  four Ellie. As the ten­sion began to dis­si­pate I could feel the col­lec­tive release three tables away.

Switch­ing my antenna back to Sue and Bob I learned the source of their con­cern over their road trip was based on

• The fact that their move into a new home was sched­uled the week­end fol­low­ing their return and;
• The birth win­dow of their new baby.

At the same time, out of my right ear I was hear­ing the tail end of Jody and Jack’s con­ver­sa­tion about  dec­o­rat­ing  their home, after which they changed sub­jects  to talk­ing about each other’s com­ing week.

Over at the large group, Tom the patri­arch, was talk­ing about his plans to spend more time up north fish­ing and enjoy a sum­mer off after which he intended on start­ing a small con­sult­ing busi­ness from their cabin. His  daugh­ter Becky announced she was preg­nant and Jim, one of the mar­ried sons, shared his recent pro­mo­tion which required a move to Denver.

So what was really going on here? What do these con­ver­sa­tions have to do with the price of beer on Sun­day? Was there more than just eaves­drop­ping? Well yes…

Who’s Tom really talk­ing to?

What we had  in that lit­tle out door din­ing area was a con­ver­sa­tion pool, and I’m sure I was not the only one lis­ten­ing in. Each group was shar­ing their news with each other, car­ry­ing on dis­cus­sions and in one case mend­ing wounds. All of these con­ver­sa­tions were going on more or less at the same time and not a one was any less impor­tant than the other, no mater how triv­ial they appeared from my van­tage point. Hold this pic­ture in your mind.

While each con­ver­sa­tion appears lim­ited to its’ own respec­tive sphere,  what would hap­pen if a wild card in the form of a mutual friend, of  any two of the groups, were intro­duced. How would that effect things, or would it? Obvi­ously, the two pre­vi­ously sep­a­rate groups would now be joined, open­ing a chan­nel for them to share pre­vi­ously unknown com­mon expe­ri­ences and sto­ries… all through the con­nec­tion made by their mutual friend.

Another phe­nom­e­non would also hap­pen, the dynam­ics of the entire din­ing area would change in rela­tion to each group’s prox­im­ity to the recently joined groups. Peo­ple on the other end of the din­ning area would be less effected than those closer who would now have addi­tional infor­ma­tion avail­able about the two pre­vi­ously sep­a­rate groups.

They’re not talk­ing to me…

Now, how often have you either said or heard “why do I want to know what some­one had for break­fast?” when dis­cussing Twit­ter or Face­book? The fact of the mat­ter is, every time you sit in a restau­rant or cof­fee shop or even on a bus, you are tak­ing part in a social activ­ity, every con­ver­sa­tion going on is avail­able to you and you have a choice to lis­ten, engage or tune out. Being in that place at that time you have cho­sen to plug into a real time, in per­son multi-party line, a net­work made up of lots of lit­tle networks.

What I was expe­ri­enc­ing on Father’s Day was like being in the mid­dle of a live in per­son, Face­book or Twit­ter event. The infor­ma­tion shared within each group, large and small was really rel­e­vant only to those in the group, I only heard snip­pets. How­ever, by hear­ing the snip­pets I was able to feel more con­nected to the other folks in the din­ing area, and I was able to come and go in and out of the con­ver­sa­tions, plac­ing my atten­tion on the most interesting.

In essence, I bore wit­ness to human inter­ac­tion at a very inti­mate level and my take away was richer because I got to watch one fam­ily heal an old wound, another work out some plans and yet another share each other’s joy.

So, the next time you think about Face­book, Twit­ter or any other form of social media remem­ber, that per­son describ­ing her break­fast was not talk­ing to you, that dis­cus­sion was going on in another con­text, one which you have a choice to ignore or not. Social media like Face­book and Twit­ter are sim­ply no more than con­ver­sa­tions going on while you’re in the room and that room can be as large or small as you wish and con­tain as many other par­tic­i­pants as you wish.