lately I’ve been overwhelmed by the number and variety of tools i use to keep in touch with friends and family. i use iMessage with my mom and two of my sisters, WhatsApp with the rest of my family + Ulrich and his kids + my oldest friends from high school and college, instagram messenger for my friends Daria and Kelly from pittsburgh, and facebook messenger to reach Amy’s dad and my cousins in Taiwan. Then there’s twitter, discord and substack to connect to like-minded people around my niche interests like writing, meditation, spirituality and psychology. and of course, there’s emails. i love e-mails for their open-ended format, allowing a depth of intimate connection which seems lacking in the other channels, but i am also just as likely to get writer’s block when staring at my flashing cursor on a blank “reply” screen as i am when starting a new Substack post.
when I’m in a particularly rudderless state, I find myself clicking methodically from one app to another, constantly in search of a response or update from someone i love, without being fully aware of the repetitive motions i’m going through. in a moment of great sensibility i had once turned off all push notifications in the hopes that i wouldn’t get hooked by those red-tagged numbers, but i am discovering that instead of being drawn in by them i now make the extra effort to open each app one at a time, thus sucking me even deeper into the entrails of my phone.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how internet friendships are different from “real” (in-person) friendships, but not as much time thinking about how the internet remolds friendships after one of you moves out of town. back when i lived in Pittsburgh i used to see Daria in person up to three times a week and considered her one of my closest friends; we laughed all the time, ran errands together and bonded over our shared love of food and boba. I never bothered to look at her instagram posts in between our frequent hangouts. but now, from the opposite side of the atlantic, my most consistent interaction with her is as one of her Instagram followers. instagram, it turns out, is where she lashes out almost daily against people whose politics she disagrees with, showcasing a side of herself in post after post whom i can’t picture spending time with. in fact, back when we were living in pittsburgh, I’m not sure i realized that i disagreed with any of Daria’s political beliefs, although i did suspect that they were a bit more extreme than mine. and now, sensing an emerging gulf between us, i feel guilty for my bitterness towards an old dear friend, and quickly try to distract myself by scrolling through easy, 7-ingredient cooking reels elsewhere on instagram.
i suspect one problem is that messaging apps at some point decided that they wanted to be more like social media platforms (see WhatsApp stories) while social media decided to compete with messaging apps (see Instagram/Facebook Messenger and Twitter DMs). as you’ve probably noticed, Substack has not only comments but also its own in-app chat functionality, too. now that almost all communication tools allow you to both perform for an audience as well as reach out to someone privately, the boundaries between private and public communication are blending; there is no easy way to separate the two. and whereas my experience of private Daria was of a warm, easygoing kindred spirit, this public-private Daria somehow does not grant me the same access to her heart.
I can relate. Some friends who are perfectly fine in person, spew so much toxic rhetoric on Twitter or on Instagram I mute them to preserve my sanity, and my fond feelings for them.
It's interesting how the Internet simultaneously brings one closer and further from one's friends.
Thanks for writing this & for linking your website in the "what is a real friend" article. Good food for thought, and perhaps a prompt for my next Substack article!