Narratives, the digital age and getting started

First of all, I come into this class as someone who feels a bit archaic in the internet world. I participate in new technologies sort of “tongue in cheek.” I had a hard time accepting MySpace, then Facebook and now Twitter. I have only actively participated in blogs as class requirements and am slow to seek out social networking. That being said, I’m so far using Twitter as public text messaging, or as my boyfriend put it “facebook if facebook only had a feed.” I think I can handle that! I’m a little long-winded though, so Twitter has become an exercise in concise language for me (or perhaps creative abbreviation).

I enjoy Facebook now that I have accepted it into my world. That being said, I wonder sometimes if this easy access to EVERYONE actually makes people less intimate. Instead of calling people on the phone or meeting up to share pictures and stories, a short tidbit status and posted pictures have taken their place. You don’t even need to speak to someone to know how their day went or if their vacation was enjoyable.I also wonder about the definition of “friends.” Most people have “friends” they knew from a class or in high school that they haven’t seen since, previously I would have defined these people as acquaintances, but now they receive a more intimate title. Then there are online games, both Facebook and other forms. I know several people that have “Farmville friends” they know only through that application, what does that make them? My boyfriend, who is far more excited about these internet worlds than I, knows people through XBox live more intimately than some friends he made in person. They play games together but they also converse about their activities and lives away from XBox, going as far as helping XBox friends through stress of new children and the pain of divorce. This baffles me.

Narratives are similarly tricky to pin down as classifying digital age friends. My understanding of narrative is basically the stringing together of a story. Almost anything can do that theoretically. I work in a vet’s office and I can pull up any patient’s chart and tell a pretty coherent narrative  based on medication, diagnosis and in some cases simply weight history. Those charts tell me a story, despite having never met patient or owner. This isn’t typically what comes to mind when narratives are discussed, but it’s true.

I think the digital world allows us to create personal narratives as we’d like them to be believed. I read the facebook status’ of people I know in person and smile at how different they sound, their persona is edited. They tell the world what they want known, making themselves the heroes or victims and others the villain. Carefully weaving a tale about who they want to be. I see it in blog comments and look around the grocery store and wonder if the tough hot-head is really the meek girl getting barreled out of the way by a rude shopper, or if the cool and collected compassionate soul is really the rude and cranky lady yelling at the cashier. The digital world has successfully allowed us to be whoever we’d like for a time. Is it really us or are we role-playing in a fantasy land?