As per my pal liza I was going to try to draw my teenage self. But I discovered I've lost all ability to draw! In the meantime here are drawings of myself made back when I *was* a teenager...!
 |
This test was kind of cool. Lots of sliders, and the results at the end were pretty right on. fun!
PS - well the picture doesn't seem to work here, but the link at the bottom goes to my results page, and the picture's working fine in my myspace... |
I've just recently been doing all kinds of thinking and a little bit of talking about different web/RL interactions, things like how a small email list or message board of people who live close and are friends in RL can interact with the RL side of things, create more group cohesion, get everyone on the same page about things like going out to a movie or show or dinner..
And things like IM (which I am starting to use now but never used to, because back in Austin I pointed all my messages at the group-level messaging thing we had and we all just said everything to our whole little group of 15 or 20) tend to force a different kind of interaction, where you are only telling one specific person about something, so it seems more exclusionary. You can't send out a broadcast invitation/alert that something is happening, and just have a smattering of your friends show up; you have to specifically think of each person you tell.
I also feel like IM has a higher threshold of intrusion; I made that term up, but you know, like a phone call: if I barely know someone, I won't call them up and share random thoughts and chit-chat. IM is less intrusive than that, but it still feels like you sort of need to have the right to IM someone before you do it, or if you aren't that close you can do it but only in a sort of business-like way, you need a clear reason for sending an acquaintance an IM. But with a more broad-based system, you can just send random tidbits out there and whoever is interested will pick them up.
So in general I've been thinking about how some types of online interaction help build in-person friendships, and some seem to take away from them or at least not build them in the same way... Some times I feel like I'm caught up in all this online interaction to the detriment of my real social life, and that's new; I never felt that way in Austin where the two were so closely intertwined. But now I sometimes feel like my strong friendships with so many people who are all thousands of miles away have kept me from being as immersed in friendships with people who are available here as I would like.Current Music: Battle Scars Feat Willy Mason - The Chemical Brothers |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2){kind=small}
dr_pipe's journal
