Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I'm happy to see that so many of you chimed in. For the record, I don't believe frivolity is an entirely negative thing. It has a natural place in our lives and is a useful component of our social structure.
Mike Myles, I certainly never said that the entire history of written word is frivolous. That would have been ridiculous. If you read my post, you'll see that I am talking specifically about online social interaction a la Facebook and Twitter. Erika Hall, I loved what you wrote about how online connections can help keep relationships going: "Knowing with varying degrees of synchronicity about all little things my friends are doing all over the world is a really lightweight way to keep the relationship going, so that when something "hard or weighty" comes up, the bonds are in place." Great point! I agree and find this very useful. Fred Beecher wrote that he's seen tweets from people who've gone through very serious things and that he appreciates the online openness "[Twitter] has allowed me to make friends out of contacts and encouraged to me to interact with people as a whole person, not just as a fellow UX designer." Andy Polaine wrote: "Most of our face to face conversation is gossip and gossip nurtures social bonds and structures." BTW, Andy, your are 100% right that "there's a problem with 'doomed to frivolity' in the framing of the question." (I confess, I worded it precisely that way to provoke strong responses.) I agree with your assertion that frivolity doesn't necessarily mean lack of meaningfulness or social usefulness. Joshua Porter, the fact that Stephen Heywood was NOT announcing his worst days on Twitter is precisely the point I was trying to make. Rather than broadcasting across his existing social networks, he used a separate space (http://www.patientslikeme.com) where he shared the difficult, personal details of with a small set of other folks like himself. This is similar to the sad story that Grandin Donovan shared. While a childhood friend languished in a coma for a month and then died, there was a Facebook group (a smaller subset of the person's "friends") but also a semi-private group on Carepages.com. Grandin, I'm sorry that you lost a friend and I'm glad to hear that online interactions helped you through the active grieving. Ethan Smith, I think you hit the nail on the head with this sentence; "Broader social nets will perhaps lean toward lighter topics - and more closed ones will tend to allow people to open up." This rings true because it mirrors interaction in real life. Both of the stories Joshua and Grandin shared seemed to support this as well. The theme in most of the posts on this topic is that knowing what a far off friend had for lunch may, at first blush sound trivial, but the fact that the person is sharing what's on her radar with me helps us both feel connected. The connection is not trivial therefore the bits of info that help us maintain a link are important as well, even if they are usually more light-hearted or playful than serious. Playfulness is wonderful part of human nature. Thank you all for such insightful posts! Kind regards, Angel Anderson ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
