I’ve always been a “lurker” on all platforms and communities because when I do have a question or would like to contribute my first thought has become:
Actually, let me google it first
In which case I’ll usually have some answer. Usually it isn’t a complete answer but enough for me to not want to share my question anymore.
The problem with this mantra for me is that in a discussion, I don’t want to know what website x thinks the definition or answer is, I want to know what you think it is. If the term/issue is uncontroversial then googling is fine, but if it’s vague, confusing or has different interpretations, Google could make things worse.
E.g. someone complains that cultural marxism is bringing down western civilization. I could Google this and find out it’s an antisemitic conspiracy theory espoused by the Nazis and now the American right. But will this definition help me understand the person I’m talking to and what they mean? Will it help the conversation? Absolutely not.
But if I asked, “what do you mean by that” nd the person responded, e.g. “how the left is pushing diversity in society against the will of ordinary people” (or whatever), then we can have an actual conversation about what is bothering this person.
And another problem with it is it prevents talking.
Some anthropologists liken human speech to chimpanzee grooming. To bond, a chimpanzee will sit there and pick through another chimpanzee’s back hair. Time spent doing this builds a bond between them.
Conversation works that way for humans. It’s just an instinctual emotional need: to put energy into activities that create bonds with other people.
I’m autistic, and learning the above was a sort of breakthrough moment for me in terms of respecting small talk, respecting the real value of a conversation even when there’s no practical need for knowledge transfer.
Of course, I’d rather bond by snuggling because it low-key hurts to talk, but our culture really only permits that with animals, lovers, and family.
Incidentally, that connects with another interesting fact about the Dunbar number.
As some may know that’s the number of people who can live in a tribe or community where everyone’s brain still has the capacity to remember (a) how they feel about each other person and (b) how each other person feels about each other person.
It’s about 120 individuals, for humans. Once it gets beyond 120 people, you start encountering “strangers”. People you might have seen, but you don’t know who they’re tight with, what they’re up to.
For chimps it’s 40 individuals. Chimps can’t keep track of more than 40 nodes in an interrelationship graph of relationships.
So 120 and 40. It’s a ratio of three. Some speculate this ratio is because chimps’ bonding behavior permits bonding with one other individual at a time, and humans’ bonding behavior permits bonding with three individuals at a time.
For chimps, that’s grooming. You can groom one other chimp’s back at a time, allowing you to bond with one other chimp.
With humans it’s talking. So why three people? (This is where it gets really interesting, at least for me.) It’s three people because when one person is speaking to three or fewer people, it’s intimate enough to be a bonding experience. And when a person is speaking to four or more people, it doesn’t feel intimate enough to be a bonding experience.
The really fun part is you can see this happening at social gatherings. Because one speaker can engage three listeners while maintaining intimacy, this means conversations can be two to four people. As soon as a fifth person walks up, beer in hand, to join the conversation, it will split into two conversations. You’ll have a 2 and a 3, instead of one big 5.
Or, if the conversation does stay stable at 5 people, it morphs into more of a “presentation” that separates the group into speakers and audience, and that’s not a bonding experience.
At most social gatherings, people want to connect, so instead of that switch to audience mode the conversation will split when it reaches 5, into separate 2- and 3-person conversations.
So the other problem with the google mantra is it removes an excuse to talk from society, and we need excuses to verbalize at each other so we don’t feel alienated. Asking for directions, bumming a cigarette, talking about the weather or sports, saying good morning and how-are-you-im-fine and hello, these are all cultural scaffolds that make excuses to hear each other’s voices.
And asking for basic info is part of that. In conversations, we get more things to say if we normalize asking for and providing basic background info. It helps people get their voices warmed up, to say things that aren’t that deep, to present easily-found knowledge, just warm up the vocal chords with the basic stuff.
Very insightful and not something I’d have thought of. A large part of me feels as though many of the issues of today can be blamed on the fact that nobody actually talks to eachother anymore. Socializing has been replaced with social media, where you see curated snapshots of your “friend’s” lives which only show the good, and get invested in the curated snapshots of the lives of celebrities. You look at your friends and random celebrities doing things instead of doing them yourself or with your friends. And in turn, you post your own curated snapshots to make yourself look good and feel like you’re participating, thus continuing the cycle.
This state of knowing only about the cool and fun things other people are doing while simultaneously never actually speaking to them causes you to feel left out because your life isn’t anywhere near as fun as their lives look, and the fact that people tend to only post good looking pictures of themselves online makes you feel bad about your own appearance, because you don’t look anywhere near as good as they make themselves look.
With how pervasive the atomization caused by the internet is, I should’ve known that even its greatest strength, its ability to deliver information, might have harmful side effects. Indeed, I wonder how many conversations I’ve not had the opportunity to partake in because I found what I wanted out of them on Google. Or books I haven’t read because I got what I wanted out of them on Google. Convenient, for sure, but perhaps it takes a little bit of the joy out of finding new information, whether that joy comes from the other stuff you learn along the way or the human interaction which occurs in the process.
great post
I feel like a similar thing happens because of social media like Instagram. people constantly lose the opportunity to tell others all about the things they do because they already did that in batch. what could easily become dozens of small conversations with different people, where one could add their own flavour to the story and improve it, making it ever more interesting each time it is told, ends up not happening at all. silent scrolling and tapping instead
on top of that, multimedia usually translates real moments badly - for the better or worse: that giant hill becomes tiny and boring or that perfect angle hides the ugly part of the scene and looks beautiful. not to mention the fact that they are taking away part of enjoying real moments for the sake of creating online content
I, myself, don’t do this. but I often travel with people who do and I lost track of the times I meet someone afterwards and start talking about it, only to be stopped with a “oh I saw it all already”. and I really can’t blame anyone, since it’s a very easy trap to fall into and it’s even expected of you in some social circles
Yes! Each person has a unique perspective and it’s enriching to hear people tell their own stories about things, because each person contains an entire world.
Well… If you know where someone is getting their information, it actually does say a lot about a person.
When I run across an argument like that, I know to back out of it and reassess if it’s worth it in the first place.
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Yeah I get that people use it that way but what if you actually want a discussion? Gets a bit tiresome to be accused of “letting them spew hatred” when if you actually want them to stop spewing hatred, a conversation with actual understanding is necessary, imo. Or at least the best way I know of
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Why I started to ask those questions here. And I have gotten back way better responses than I ever gotten from a Google search.