This title is actually twice removed from its original source - I’m borrowing it from a recent mailing list message from Jason Calacanis titled “We Live in Public (the end of empathy)“. The essay happened to come out around the same time as super-blogger Michael Arrington’s post about being spit on at a conference and both pieces raise a lot of questions about our electronic interactions.

Calacanis gives the problem a name: Internet Asperger’s Syndrome.  My own experiences have been nowhere near as dark or damaging. However,  I have found that the new online life that we lead is an emotional rollercoaster of extreme highs and extreme lows. Jess and I are very involved in the community site that we run and putting ourselves in front of tens of thousands of people every day has had a huge impact on our real world life.

One part of Calacanis’ essay that struck me was his video game analogy. “Screen names and avatars shift from representing people to representing characters in a video game”.  He takes it somewhere else and I’d like to just borrow that one sentence. We see this happen all of the time. Our awareness of this game is why Someone is wrong on the Internet is funny. Personally, it’s a tough realization. Our feeling about companies that are faceless and inhuman has really shaped how we run our site, but in the end, maybe we’re just avatars and names and we aren’t really human at all?

Today’s mountain of social networks are certainly not a new thing - online behavior that differs from real world behavior can be traced back to Usenet, BBSes and earlier still. …and then you can continue back through other forms of communication. Still - it seem like something new is happening. Companies in every industry are rushing to having a social online presence where they can talk to their customers and their customers talk to each other.  Is there a way to prevent it from turning into a big game full of characters and not people? I have no idea what our online lives will be like in 5 years but it’s probably safe to say that we’ll never stop looking back at “simpler times”.

edit - 30 minutes later: Melissa’s comment reminds me that small business owners around the world are struggling with this. Most small businesses have personal relationships with their customers (and most customers expect this personal treatment) but it’s not quite the same when all of your interactions are online instead of in person…

I haven’t got an ending to speak of. This is just a bunch of half-thoughts that I wanted to share. Pretend that we had a beer together at a bar - that’s when I deliver most of my half (or quarter) thoughts.

Oh - I do have an ending! This Valentine’s Day weekend, Jess, Mary-Heather and I are going to meet a bunch of Ravelers at The Knitting Nest in Austin. Meeting Ravelry users in person is one of my very favorite things about doing this for a living. Sometimes they are shy, sometimes we are shy, sometimes meetups are a little chaotic, but we love it. It is really energizing to talk to people about how what we are doing has been a positive thing in their lives.

And for luck - a third ending that is a lyric from a Regina Spektor song. “People are just people like you…Maybe you should kiss someone nice, Or lick a rock, Or both.”