On The Death Of InterWeb Friendships

The falling away of InterWeb friendships is a very odd thing.

In most real life friendships, the falling away is something that one can see coming:  arguments, less frequent conversations, even downright nastiness.  But looking back, one can track a trajectory, an inflection point where one says "Yes, that is where things started to fall apart."

InterWeb friendships are not like that.  As there is (typically) no in-person interaction, there is really no way to "say" when an inflection point is reached.  Certainly, one might look to a time when contact became less frequent - but to be fair, the nature of the InterWeb is such that infrequent is often times the way the friendships work.  It just occurs: one day, you are suddenly no longer in contact with the person.  Perhaps there is an explanation or perhaps you only realize it days or weeks later when you are suddenly made aware you have not heard from the person in some time.

Oddly enough, one of the most noticeable issues from this is simply the sudden lack of routine that develops.  I suspect for many, contacts with InterWeb friends becomes an activity like any other:  most likely I will answer at this time because Y will also respond.  Or, we get used to checking to see if someone responded to our communication.  All that is gone, of course:  the responses will not be there no matter how often one goes and checks.  It is as if, in the old days, a friend moved and you kept calling their phone only to never get it answered.

What does this argue?  I am not sure.  I am certainly questioning such friendships right now as they can disappear without warning (which kind of defeats the purpose of a friendship).  It certainly is teaching me that sometimes how I use my time is not based on how people actually respond but rather the degree and the speed to which I believe they should respond.  And - like my media fast during Lent - I find it creating space in my life, space with silence that nothing seems to fill up.

We have reached the age where friendships come in to being without an explosion of emotion and end in a quiet fluttering away of electrons, never to return.  Our words, like our feelings, disappear into the great void like a program being executed.