{"id":192354,"date":"2014-09-07T21:52:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-07T21:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/09\/07\/zwischendenstuehlen-there-is-a-thing-about-the\/"},"modified":"2014-09-07T21:52:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-07T21:52:08","slug":"zwischendenstuehlen-there-is-a-thing-about-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/09\/07\/zwischendenstuehlen-there-is-a-thing-about-the\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

zwischendenstuehlen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

There is a thing about the \u2018relationship\u2019 created by silent following\/reblogging\/liking that I\u2019ve always been missing IRL, even before social networks existed:<\/p>\n

I was thinking about it because I remembered this woman I studied with; we worked a bit together at the maths faculty, and we had mutual friends and met sometimes, but we never established a personal bond. But I always liked and admired her and found her interesting and special, and I think about her sometimes. And I still think it would be nice for her to know she made this impression on me, especially because she generally didn\u2019t seem too confident.<\/p>\n

I could now make this great jump, and write to her after ten years, and it would perhaps be a great thing (It can be, I\u2019ve done this before), and perhaps she would answer, a bit embarrassed and flattered, and perhaps we would exchange emails and become friends, and it\u2019s not a bad thing, but honestly it is not what my feeling is about. I am not even so good in handling many friends and I don\u2019t want to make a life-changing intervention. I just want this positive feeling of mine that I have towards her to be of some use<\/em> to her. Just to brighten her day a little bit, and that\u2019s that. Perhaps she has no idea there are people around who silently admired her. It would be nice to know, wouldn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

The same goes for complete strangers I see in the street and I think\u00a0 \u201cGreat beard style\u201d or \u201cWow your eyelashes\u201d or \u201cWhat an interesting bumper sticker on your purse\u201d. I could<\/em> go and tell them, and I have done it in some occasions, but it\u2019s hard for an introvert, and it also might not be totally pleasant for them, depending on what they are doing and if they enjoy being talked to by strangers. And it\u2019s not that I necessarily want<\/em> to talk to them and get to know them, I just somehow think it\u2019s a pity they will never know there is someone (or even many people?) who think they have a beautiful voice, or a great taste in hats?!<\/p>\n

So I really think people who fear having 2000 \u2018friends\u2019 on a social network is ruining the concept of friendship are getting it wrong.
We can still get intensely close to people, exchange deepest thoughts and feelings up to falling in love, with people we meet IRL and with people we meet online. But there is an additional<\/em> way of interacting and just giving this little (or medium sized) bit of admiration to the person it\u2019s directed at, even if we don\u2019t want more. I enjoy that immensely, on the giving and on the receiving end.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

zwischendenstuehlen: There is a thing about the \u2018relationship\u2019 created by silent following\/reblogging\/liking that I\u2019ve always been missing IRL, even before social networks existed: I was thinking about it because I remembered this woman I studied with; we worked a bit together at the maths faculty, and we had mutual friends and met sometimes, but we … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4582,3502,9146,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192354\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}