Off our social media gourd.

Or How To Make Friends with People, Offline.

Sometimes, we take it for granted that people are easy to get along with more than others - we attribute a number of factors relating to identity: as race, gender, social background, political affiliations, shoe size, eye colour, etc. that do not have anything at all to do with this failure in making friends, the “old fashioned way” or what is, without the help of peering on social media friend-of-friends contacts, which might be an indelicacy actually enjoyed by some, but are intrusive to others (cough, ahem).

Here’s my tidbits (well, 5) to all this social media fodder:

1/ Make eye contact, very sincerely qualify yourself a member of the human race, don’t be shy. The confidence of “nice to meet you” shown, is elegantly more put across when uttered.

2/ Know what borders you are crossing. Sometimes, we are not readily accessed in actual, as that in social media. So learn to put on the brakes when you exclaim “i know you” to someone you were “peering” just the night before.

3/ Being able to collaborate mildly on the psyche of cultures. This is harder than it is writ. (Also there are no hard and fast rules to this). Sometimes, we need to understand the givens in any situation: 1/ race is a thing that people are sensitive to, 2/ words are not undone when spoken, 3/ there’s a reason why handshakes are still the preferred wage of any political interaction, 4/ kissing or bussing (kissing cheeks twice, thrice) is for the really friendly friends (you’re in the same circles) - not applied to applicants of the amorous - that will seem really fresh, 5/ your inner intuition will do well to cooperate when necessary. Trust it.

4/ Being slightly off-hand (and not just with peppering the emojis and smileys) when: 1/ not being presumptuous, always confirm your queries - and your place for them validates it when you get slapped in return, (same as online, but it’s funnier to deal with people because it is meant to be an interface for social neutralisation , & objectivity) 2/ dealing with serious attempts at un-friending someone in real-time-actual is preferred to an inch towards being callous, (even online) - when it is allowed by some social networks to UnFriend someone that button does not exist in real life. There has to be a conversation, as we are a part of the human race. Not interfaced robotic with the gallantries of submission to the norm of nerds. (Just saying).

5/ Cornering those sharp turns: when you do imagine a slight of (online hand), and change of social regard and stature had been tampered with, because said nerd can’t face up to the dreaded conversation at hand, it is wise to avert yourself from the impact of a social mäelstrom, which in non-slavic, is formidable sh*t-space that occurs in the grid of both “known friends” as well as what the more casual-official peering of Facebook friends. This is reserved for the ones who’ve made clinical or unfortunate clerical errors in social. Online, is forgivable, but to apply this to offline measures - impacts the social dynamic quite greatly. Fortunately, there is a mechanism, online that applies the dynamic of social offline, that compresses the time that it takes for those slighted wounds to heal.

C'est La Vie?

We need to accept our various fates with diversifying the genius of the super*crowd…a necessity if we are to move markets *online, I thought. But, socially our global impact remains loyal to what is a natural social order of global civility. And not put commerce in front of what is a tools-down effort at offline socials.

A slight reminding of how people live their lives, and what it might feel to be them, from time to time, and compromising yourself - for them, and vice versa. It is a place for us in social media to keep at the guards of what is human/e in the world to remind people what was it like in the old times, when we didn’t have all this hallowed-halls-access so easily to people.

But to always apply ourselves always socially, both times - and discipline all our online manners when we come across people as well, offline.