Elevator romance
by Bob on March 14, 2008
Sometimes when we are stuck in an elevator or lift or on a long airplane ride, we befriend a fellow passenger. In such a case, it is an odd relationship for it has all the elements of a very deep and long friendship or romance, but basically it is born out of necessity and a tedious illusion.
Rarely do such fleeting and temporary friendships ever go any further than the exchange of business cards or telephone numbers. They seem to have been an agreed-upon illusion, although one can hardly believe it’s fleeting in situ and in vivo, and fall apart like a house of cards when the elevator is unstuck or the airplane lands.
These are very intense, short-burst-of-energy relationships of the weakest sort.
Even in job and office settings where we work for years, we think that our office colleagues are our very best friends, even if we go out with them outside of work, but we find out later, if we ever leave the job, it was just a convenient work embrace.
So it is with online social networking systems like MySpace and Friendster, etc. It is seemingly intense, but the illusion is at the base of the pyramid, holding up the fallacy of the intensity in a short burst of interest, like a remote control hand clicker for a TV where people channel surf and jump from channel to channel with little attention span, to the detriment of the producers who made an hour long show to be watched in its entirety.
So, we find that besides being a laughable illusion, online social interaction networks require a lot of time, which leads to nothing truly interpersonally.
It’s a dead end. Unless we know the people already in person.
We’re better off in the town square, talking to ourselves and hoping someone else will talk with us back. Of course, one has blue tooth technology in his ear and it looks like the person is a psychotic but isn’t. Technology has many side effects, many of which are just not mutually beneficial. One hopes for more simplicity in our lives, but knows in one’s heart, it will never happen again, like the unique loss of innocence. Sad, really. It was so much better when it was real. Despite the story of Pygmalion and his statue.