Let me start off by saying I have very few, if any friends, and even less “good” friends. Most average people have 1-5 really good friends, which they’ve probably known for a long, long time, another 10 or so friends, and then a dozen or so acquaintances they they’d wave to and chat with on the street but probably are not expecting birthday party invites.
I, however, do not. The guy that I would normally call “my best friend since kindergarten” and I have hung out for maybe 10 hours in the past 3 years thats about 1out of every 2630 hours. Now its not his job to hang out w/ me, he lives on the other side of the state and has shit to do. And thats not what this blog is about.
This blog is about the physical and psychological need to interact with people. And I firmly believe that a massive lack of intelligent conversation and general interaction can lead to a mental breakdown or even down-right insanity.
Now, I’m not claiming I’m cuckoo-bananas, but I do often get depressed when I go a short time without talking to someone. With the exception of the few hours I hung out with my friend Will this year, all my conversations have been with my parents, a store clerk, my dogs (they don’t talk back sadly), or someone to whom I said “Hey, are you doing any hiring here?”
The lack of conversation and interaction makes me desperate, the longer I don’t talk to someone, the more desperate I get, human interaction is a basic human need. Some other basic human needs are food. A person goes without food for a while they’ll get desperate. They’ll hunt for food, they’ll steal food, they’ll rob or even kill someone to get money to pay for food if they have to. A normal, well fed person would never resort to cannibalism, but if you get stranded in a cave and go a few weeks without food and most people will think “Man, I hope the fat one dies first, he could last for days.” Think of it like this, if brussel sprouts are your least favorite food, but if its the only thing you have to eat, it doesn’t taste so bad when you’re starving.
Now how does cannibalism and/or brussel sprouts? If you ask me, conversational cannibalism would be classified as talking to yourself and answering back. You hear, or know of, homeless people talking to themselves as they walk down the street. Not too many people stop to chat with a homeless man.
Luckily for me, I’m not a conversational cannibal… yet… I still have one method of interaction left: The Webbernets… Its why I blog. Comments are like quick convos. Quickies are fine if you’re not getting anything else. There are chat rooms, social networking sites, lots of options. Lately, the only friends I can say that I actually have are something I call e-cquaintances, people you talk to through chat rooms, IMs or social networking sites. I’d say I have 1 really good e-cquaintance, 1 or 2 semi-good e-cquaintances, and around 3 not so good e-cquaintances. And only one of those I talk to more than two times per month.
So I decided to broden my e-rizons and join some social network sites. Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, OKCupid, FaceTheJury, Plenty of Fish, Yahoo Personals, Adocu, and Faceparty are only a few of the websites I have or had accounts on that I would say I used to meet people. With the exceptions of 2 or 3 people on Myspace, I’d say social networking for me was an epic fail.
The thing I dislike the most is the fact that people who have dozens of real life friends get all the friends on these social network sites. Granted, its “social” and if they have lots of friends in life then they are obviously good at “social.” I’m not so good at the social aspect. Besides Myspace, none of my plethora of social network adventures turned out to be more than one or two short conversations and then nothing. End of conversation. End of possible budding friendship.
So what is a guy to do before succumbing to conversational cannibalism? Should I just start planning for interaction insanity? I used to think “Hey, if they won’t talk to me, maybe they’ll talk to someone else.” But that can get someone in trouble. I’d talk to someone about this problem, but… I think we already covered this…
