Ambient Intimacy Considered

Let's get intimate...ambiently.

With Twitter, Facebook, and what's left of Myspace, we have the capacity, through social networking sites, to stay in touch with people without ever engaging them in person — without ever, in essence, touching them at all. You can maintain, by the slimmest of virtual threads, a relationship from miles away. You can keep tabs on who's having babies and getting married (not necessarily in that order, or even together). Who got a new job this week? Who bought a car? Who's hungover from last night's soiree?

Best of all, you don't even have to call them. That's so 1990.

I noticed ambient intimacy a few years ago, when I'd update my blog and my hit count would suddenly spike, no doubt the result of RSS feeds or Myspace blog subscriptions. Then I noticed that the only time I'd hear from people would be when I updated my Facebook profile in some way. Change one thing and BAM! tons of comments. Throwing out a simple profile edit is jumping on a moving train. I update my status results in comments, but only if the status update is interesting. No one comments if your status is just "John is in the shower." But try "John is voting for _________ this year" and see what happens. Well, if your name is John. Don't update your Facebook much? You likely don't get many comments.

Social networking is a necessary evil if we hope to stay in touch with people, but are we really staying in touch...or are we just keeping tabs? There is no sense of touch, though Facebook has the "Poke" feature, which is a simple way to show someone that you're still there, even if you're not talking. Thing is, "poking" is, I've found, more of a tool for the flirty or female social butterfly than anything two heterosexual men would be caught dead doing. We're not doing much in the way of personal contact.

In an ambient sense, we are constantly aware of what our friends are doing, so we maintain the details, but it's easy to forget how easy it is to know said details. Make a comment about changing jobs and, to your surprise, people you barely know will congratulate you. Announce your engagement before your fiancee has a chance to tell her friends, and well, you're an asshole. (Not that I lived that or anything.)

Puns abound, too. "Poke" a girl you used to date and you can say, "Hey! We're poking again!" *rimshot* [Insert shared laughter and idle reminiscence, followed by horrible memories and resentment anew.]

Whether this is healthy remains to be seen. We're able to "keep in touch," but we're not actually contacting. We're spying, in a way. And we don't even have to tell people we're watching.