The Many Roomed House of the Internet

Hey guys! I hope that you're all having wonderfully present days!

This little analogy sprung into my mind when I was considering the phenomenon that is communicating to people all across the internet and how that compares to in real life. The main thing that struck me was the fact that on the internet, it's very possible to be talking to more than two people all at once and to be having completely different conversations. I've done that with around 3-4 people all at once and it can be quite overwhelming at times!

But what really struck me was the fact that we would never be able to do this in real life. You'd never talk to that many people about different things all at once, talking to that many would only work if you were all in one group being a part of the same conversation. This led me to think about how if you were to do this in real life, it'd be almost like each conversation taking place in a different room and how if you wanted to talk to that many people about different things, it would never happen. You'd never be able to up and leave a person in one room to go and continue a conversation from before with another person in another room. It'd be so immensely rude and diabolical in real life and impossible that the fact that this phenomenon is possible with the internet is quite amazing and definitely a big change from how we're used to operating in social situations!

This was brought on because of me trying to get hold of a friend who I usually talk to around the same time everyday. What made me sad was the fact that they felt like they weren't doing very good multi-tasking because they weren't able to switch their attention from the group of people in one room with which they were having a lot of fun, to me, in a completely different room with a different atmosphere altogether. I didn't like the fact that somehow not being able to be in two places at once and give two different sets of people the same amount of presence was somehow bad because it's not really how things are supposed to operate. I just felt bad that they felt like they had to leave the other room to visit the room I was in when really, I didn't really have to be there at all. I could leave the house or had I known they were entertaining others, not come at all and not create that thought in the back of their mind and make it harder to enjoy that social occasion.

All in all, what I gained from this was the fact that if we're going to try and use the internet to communicate, we do also have to understand how much differently we have to operate ourselves and the parameters we set ourselves because of how much differently it works to in real life. We shouldn't feel like we're somehow failing because we've not managed to align our parameters to how much we can handle to the reality of how much presence we can actually realistically give. Multi-tasking in real life is much easier because the tasks are things we can see and are tangible and can be understood. People aren't always the same and having to get your head around that, especially with the phenomenon that is the internet, can be quite a hard balance to strike, especially when you're trying to live your real life reality at the same time!

I hope that this made some sort of sense guys! I'd love to hear what you think on the subject :D I hope that you all have wonderful weeks and I'll speak to you very, very soon indeed!