Oh, internet, you great connector you. You have made everyone in the universe just a click away, for better or worse.
I am thrilled by the way social media has let me connect with total strangers and with long lost friends in the last year or so. I get excited when I come across someone that I want to know better or who I thought I would never communicate with again.
But what about when you don't want to reconnect? Or worse, if someone doesn't want to reconnect with you?
Among the many fun reunions I've experienced online, there are a couple of old friends that I've found who are non-responsive to my enthusiastic reach-out. We're talking crickets. And I try to let it just roll off my back and not feel like the gawky teenager I was, but it's hard not to take it personally. If they have a social media profile, it's assumed they want to be found, right? It's not like I knocked on their front door unannounced.
And, by nature of the game, there have been people who have reached out to me that have made me groan. But really, I try not to ignore anyone. We're adults now.
Right? We're adults now. Which means we are allowed to politely deflect or happily embrace such online connections. So why does it send us all right back to junior high behavior and insecurities?
I tell myself that not all periods of life lend themselves to nostalgia. Like when your high school reunion comes around and you're not feeling like Look At Me Now, maybe you don't go. There have certainly been times in my life when I wouldn't have been in the mood to respond to a 1x1 gravatar of a vaguely familiar face with Where I Have Been. Maybe that month I felt heartbroken, or ugly, or unaccomplished.
I know so many stories of people who have found or been found by someone that was unwelcome in their current life. Some really funny stories, actually, that I would share if they weren't so damning.
I love where the internet has taken us, especially lessening the degrees of separation. But maybe sometimes we're all just a little too...available.
Have you found or been found by someone that opened up a range of emotions?
