Waxing Poetic About People and the Internet...

The internet is an interesting place. If you can call it a place. Maybe its more like some kind of alternate reality that we have created within our own world. Anyway, besides sometimes watching dogs sleepwalking or reading a news article, the internet can still be a powerful way to understand and connect with people. Let me give you some examples.

Over the last couple days, maybe it was yesterday; I was bumping around facebook and discovered that someone who is mad at me removed me from their "friend" list. I wasn't looking for this, I just merely ran across it. Now I know the person is mad at me but I didn't understand how mad until that moment. You see, this person is smart, caring, has tons of friends, is often busy working or doing tons of cool things. So the fact that this person sat down at some point and burned the calories (as few as they maybe) to actually go through the process of removing me as a friend spoke volumes.

I have plenty of people who I am not close to, don't speak to, or even really care for. But the thought of going through the steps (few as they are) of removing them from my facebook never crosses my mind. In that one simple act I got a much bigger sense of how pissed this person must be at me, and how irrevocably damaged any past friendship may be. Which for me is sad. But in the same breath it shows how the internet can give us a glimpse into other people's thoughts, emotions, passions, idiosyncrasies, nuances, and the like.

Second example, yesterday I was thinking if someone who may have forever changed the course of my life. In the spring of 2001 I had a long conversation with a high school teacher of mine. Mr. Akins. I talked to him about my concerns of leaving home for college. At the time my family was financially unstable and my dad was in prison. Being the oldest I felt a sense of duty to my family. Long story short Mr. Akins convinced me that going away to UCSB would be fine, and would be the best thing for me. Without that convo who knows what would have happened. I may have never gone to Santa Barbara and met the great friends that I have now. I would not have become an RA and thus never gone into student affairs, which means I probably wouldnt have ended up at USC and met the people I have grown close to and admired during my time here. Well, I have only been able to track down Mr. Akins once every two to three years since then. But thanks to the wonders of social networking sites I have now become an online friend of his. I can keep him abreast of my life (I figure he has a right to know considering the impact he has had on it). And at the same time I can keep tabs on him and his life and his family. Pretty cool - if you ask me.