How To Forget Real Life
Everything Is True
Ada Hoffmann's author newsletter
When my local social events first started to reopen after a long lockdown, one of my big fears was that people in my local groups would behave the way people behaved online. They'd spend all our social time having bitter arguments about the issues of the day. They'd realize I'd done something questionable - we're talking small sins, like reading certain fanfiction, or doing polyamory in a certain way, or even staying too long with a partner who wasn't good for me - and I'd instantly be cancelled from the group forever.
Surprise: turns out real life is not, in fact, like Twitter. Nobody cancelled me. I spent the last few months meeting up with my local friends and they love me and think I'm great.
It's not that these people don't care about their principles or about how to be better. We have had lots of conversations about how to be healthier and improve our habits, how to be careful with people's boundaries, how to communicate better and so on - but none of these conversations have been had in a way that treats members of the group as disposable.
An example of how wound up I got about this involves an older woman I know, who was constantly clicking Like on very opinionated posts. I wanted this woman's approval, but I would watch what she Liked and get terrified - oh no! She thinks people HAVE to X! She thinks people CAN NEVER Y! It's going to be so hard to please this person.
Yet, when I met her in person, she was entirely different than what I'd projected onto her - far more patient and kinder, far more tolerant of different ideas and of the idea that there's no wrong way to do things (as long as you aren't being bigoted or hurting anybody).
I finally cracked this woman's code when I realized she'd clicked Like on something that said "No one should do X - it's disrespectful!" when she herself was literally and openly planning to do X in a few day's time. (I believe X was something along the lines of, "holding a social event not related to 9/11 on the anniversary of 9/11.")
That was when I realized that she wasn't clicking Like on posts because she wholeheartedly agreed with them. She was clicking Like on posts because she thought they were interesting perspectives to consider.
After I figured that out, she and I got along just fine.
Similarly: I met up with my brother and his wife as a part of the birthday festivities this weekend. I hadn't seen them in a few years. I loved them and missed them, but I couldn't help remembering all the small topics we disagreed on. (Things like "what should be done about people who can't get the COVID vaccine because of an immune disorder?" and "what is the nature of gender exactly?") I was terrified, not so much that we'd fight, but that they'd fight with all my other friends, everyone would hate each other, and the party would be ruined.
Except - surprise! - nobody hated each other, nobody got onto a weird ideological tangent about something when they were supposed to be celebrating my birthday, and when cleaning up after the party we had a great conversation about gender in which we had way more common ground than I remembered us having.
I am entirely blaming Twitter for these misunderstandings.
I'm not saying there aren't people in real life who blow up over little things or create petty drama. Of course there are, and I've met a few since I rejoined society. But it's much harder in real life to turn the petty drama into a pile of thousands of incensed people, as opposed to a spat between a handful of them. And it's much easier in real life to find social circles where the petty drama is an occasional unpleasant blip, and not a constant fucking thing.
We already know all the reasons why social media can be toxic, but after many months (exact number depending on where you are in the world) of lockdown, of social media being the only option left where many of us can have friends, that toxicity matters more than ever. We can get into situations where the toxic thing is the only thing we can access. We can get into situations where we forget there was any outlet in our lives that wasn't toxic. We can forget how the non-toxic version is even supposed to work.
As time goes on, I think a lot of us are going to recognize this forgetting (along with death, illness, fear of death, isolation, and so on) as one of the pandemic's many traumas.
Everything is true. The Internet is true, because the people on the other end of it are real people with real feelings. But the Internet is not something that accurately reflects the full picture of human nature. It's something that amplifies and exaggerates many parts of that nature for ad money, often parts we would rather it didn't.
It's looking like my local circles are entering another phase of caution, and a bit less in-person interaction, as local cases start to rise and the omicron variant rears its head. My local government is starting to implement stricter rules again, even as the provincial government continues to put its head in the sand. I'm glad I got to celebrate my birthday before that happened, but it's happening now.
Whatever this next phase looks like, I hope I can spend it remembering that there are people not far from me who are loving and who think the world of me. I hope I don't forget again.