What Happens In Facebook Stays In Facebook [Comment]

It was the first time in his life Isaac didn’t need to go to Vegas.

He is an avid Craps player. He goes to Vegas several times a year. And he was set to spend two days with a massive group of his oldest friends. But he was hunting for any excuse to get out of the trip.

For the past couple of years Isaac has been following his childhood friend Marvin on Facebook. And over that period, Marvin has shared a sequence of political links and comments which are diametrically opposed to Isaac’s core values. Through the weeks leading up to the trip, Isaac was convinced that these political differences can be a thorn within the side of any experience.

But a funny thing happened when he got to Las Vegas . For the first time in years, Isaac saw his old friend Marvin in person. Within ten seconds of greeting each other, Isaac was reminded that besides a shared history and group of friends, he and Marvin have almost everything else – from guitar playing to favorite books – in common. They talked for hours that first night in Vegas and the bonding session extended all the way through Sunday afternoon.

After the trip, Isaac called me to recount the numerous highlights of the weekend, from winning a number of grand at the tables to watching baseball on the massive screen in our poolside cabana. ” You know what my favorite section of the trip was?” he asked. ” Hanging out with Marvin. I forgot how much I like that guy.”

What happens in Facebook should stay in Facebook.

Online, Isaac have been encountering a couple of random droplets of digital paint. When he got to Vegas, those random splatterings were replaced a whole canvas of a relationship both he and Marvin were painting for a life-time.

Even habitual oversharers only share a subsection of themselves on social networks. That subsection might possibly be entirely different from what they share offline. And even supposing it isn’t, the stream of updates, links and shared content can only represent a tiny section of anyone’s total personality.

Is it worth it for Marvin to think about which aspect of his personality he’s sharing on Facebook and whether he wants to guide with politics? Sure. But again, no person can share it all.

And it’s not pretty much politics or other topics we frequently try and avoid in face-to-face conversations. Aren’t there some people about whom your opinion has changed since you started communicating online? There are several old friends who I now like a whole lot less because they kind of suck at Facebook.

So I hide them from my life after I should probably just be hiding them from my stream.

From my mom, I inherited the gift of summing someone up with a glance. I just get a vibe and it’s often on the mark. I once correctly assessed one of my sister’s boyfriends as a whole chump from over one hundred yards away. But I don’t often get a gut reaction online and once I do, it’s often wrong.

I’m not arguing that there isn’t a overlap between your online and offline personalities. But someone who only experiences the virtual you is absolutely not getting anywhere just about the total story.

Most people know that’s true on the subject of celebrities, public figures and people you just encounter via online communities. But they still make judgments when that’s the best content they must go on. And Facebook and Twitter have become such an integrated element of our social lives that the content you find there can alter or maybe completely distort the opinion you’ve of friends you’ve known all of your life.

For Isaac, online and abridged Marvin had completely replaced real life Marvin.

Sure, that every one changed when they spent some in-person time together. But these human to human connections seem losing some of their currency in an era where so much of our social networking has moved online. It’s getting harder to differentiate the net parts from the genuine life whole.

That’s the ability of the web. It managed to turn Vegas into real life.

Dave Pell is an online addict, early adopter and insider. He blogs regularly at Tweetage Wasteland .

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This post is tagged: childhood friend, political differences, poolside cabana, Social Networks, sunday afternoon