it takes some effort to find them, decide we want them here. but there are many writings we'd like to preserve, and this feels the place to do that at the moment. we think we'll backdate them accurately as we can, too (though this means they will appear lower in the post list here.)
we should be able to write an index to keep at the top as well. things to investigate.
<3
hmm... what do you mean by friend?
the original post, “follows are not friendships: the parasociality of feed-based social media, through the lens of content warnings” is thinking about a few things:
It says some things we still agree with today. But the title, while quippy... keeps coming back to us. Lingering. Do we agree with the statement? The desire for ever more nuance has brought some clarity with time.
It seems that a follow can be a form of companionship. There are people who follow us, we don't follow them, but they are often present in conversation with us thru the medium of replies.
There are others who simply appear as a presence, sending signals of “this resonates”. When taken as a lump sum- an aggregate number- this feels like a corrupting force, in how it affects us. but when taken as individuals, they say something else. What sorts of folk are hearing us, and perking up? Who's still around? What are they saying in their own space, who else are they listening to? We feel this way about seeing individual folk show in notification likes. When looking at who is showing up on our bandcamp. When getting an email that says “hey, thanks for that post!”.
There has been much raising of awareness in the past decade of parasociality, as a concept. It has entered the conversation as a thing that can be thought about. It first entered, and often is focused on, as a source of problems. a source of control. of power dynamics. A streamer enticing people into financially overextending by providing the illusion of friendship. Or an audience working as a mass to manipulate the one who performs for them. someone who thinks they're much closer with another than that other feels about them. Someone who's internalized every judgement they've seen anyone have about anyone else, so deeply that their selfhood is utterly paralyzed.
This is true. I have felt this. Many of us have.
But there is another side, isn't there? If we can conceptualize parasociality, what other thoughts can we think?
There are some musicians I've never met, whose music is deeply meaningful to me, yet whom I hope I continue to never meet them. Whom I have explicitly made choices to avoid such a meeting. I prefer the parasocial in that moment; it leaves more space for me to choose my own meaning, to invent a speaker who is speaking to me. That speaker does not exist, but arises from the distance between the original artist and me as a virtual voice.
There are people who I follow, who I could never carry a conversation with in a chat. And people who feel the same about me. But we still mean something to each other. That meaning has worth. It can be a force for good, when it's understood.
On some video on Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't, someone presents the concept of the “outdoor friend”– a friend who is best enjoyed outdoors. You don't seem to enjoy spending time with them inside, but when you're outside with them you have a blast. If you refuse to accept this about them, you will not have a happy friendship. If you lean into it, you'll have something truly wonderful.
We have some companions who, to us, are “convention friends”. Folks who we do not enjoy spending time with online in any capacity. Couldn't say if we'd enjoy being friends with them if they lived nearby. Couldn't say if they even remember us after it ends. But we treasure hanging out with them at conventions, for an hour or two in someone's room. This is the way we know them, and we have come to realize, the way we prefer to know them.
Everyone fits into a different place in our lives, some fit into multiple places, sometimes the places folks fit change as they themselves change, as we change. Having the words to describe these places makes it easier to observe this.
When I walk by street art that grabs me, I have often thought “I wish I could meet whoever made this”. Lately I've come to believe that in those moments, I am meeting them, a particular part of them. They are communicating with me, with those around me, through their mark in a particular place. I can join them in that forum. Will they ever see a response? Maybe, maybe not. I'm talking towards my perception of them. I am communicating with the same world they are, harmonizing without them even knowing.
We are fractal beings. We can never truly, fully, know each other. We are always meeting and interacting at the edges, at the infinite edges that somehow give rise to forms recognizable.
And we've come to feel the importance of all these forms of being together. No single one supplants the others. Each has its own meaning and force, to us.
It seems that some companionships transcend places. That some do not. That when places disappear, some companionships end with it. Some continue beyond. Some new ones form, as we more frequently inhabit places other. And that's ok, I think.
so like we did not know how to talk to each other in the beginning. or rather. we did know how, but we didn't know that we knew. like “i asked my anxiety why im anxious and it told me” is real, that happened. it was like. asking questions outloud and watching as feelings/answers formed as thoughts and inner “monologue”. but we werent thinking in plural terms then. besides, we didnt have any distinguishment in our internal thoughtstream anyway, it was all “me” and “I”. a very dialoguey “me” and “I”, but regardless, thats how it was.
at the time we had also been developing a headspace. didn't have one before, but a plural friend told us about theirs and we were like “yo thats so cool i want that that sounds awesome” so we took our visualization skills that we had from math class, working with redstone, and hand-coding 3D objects into minecraft mod source code, and started focusing that in to create a more detailed and persistent headspace than we were ever really used to.
well anyways, we still didn't really conceptualize of ourselves as separate but some parts of us were kinda feeling more like they wanted to. that it'd be fun? that it'd be interesting? eh who am i kidding there wasnt really any rationale that made sense, its just kinda that draw we feel sometimes when we know something is the thing for us, is somehow already part of who we are. we'd gotten similar with ponies, with gender, where we just kinda kept coming back to it.
we were prone to occasionally getting these... face pressures? pulsating feelings on our face or our head that would immediately go away if we touched/scratched at them gently, maybe its some kinda weird autism thing i dunno. used to stim with them a lot in school, inducing them by thinking, encouraging them, making the feelings stronger or weaker, moving them around.
so one morning one of us was sitting there thinking about how the name she picked for her middle name felt more like it was meant to be a first name. but how that didn't make any sense because she had her first name and you can't have two first names??. but she'd spend the previous night with a plural friend and so with that contextual priming, had the thought “wait what if that's the name of someone else in my head”. It's hard to say if the pressure she felt in her cheek was coincidental with this or intentional, but whatever the case, the one whose name she was thinking about, suddenly realized who they were, that indeed that was their name, and focused into that face pressure, encouraged it, somehow that feeling carried a resounding affirmation.
and it was through there that they communicated for a bit. a simple yes/no channel, until they figured out they could feel each others' emotions and go off of that. since like. they hadn't figured out how to just talk to each other in words yet. they hadn't figured out how to take turns using the body's voice, or how to take control of anything else on purpose. i think they tried using the “one person ask out loud, other answers in thoughts” strat, but either they had trouble with it or im wrong and they just forgot. I dunno, im short on details, but the communications channel was very very coarse from what i gather.
they also figured out how to be in headspace together, but that wasn't particularly useful for communicating anything other than presence either cause control over that space was very very loose, resolution was very vague, it was not possible to meaningfully hold up a sign with words on it or anything like that, we did not know what we were doing.
and then it took them months before they figured out how to actually talk to each other with like. words. things more defined than emotions. during which time i can only assume they were actually talking to each other in inner monologue without realizing it on numerous occasions lol, but who knows. it does say here in my records that when they did finally figure out how to talk to each other, the inner monologue immediately stopped. and there was quiet. because i guess they'd finally learned how to shut up after they were done talking.
but yeah thats why our face was trying to talk to us.
it's for the trans people who haven't figured it out yet. (people like we used to be!)
back then, we knew of someone in our class who was trans. but we didn't know what that meant. we didn't know them personally, nobody really explained it to us, we didn't know what sorts of feelings lead you down that road. we didn't even know if it WAS related to feelings or you just went in one day and a doctor was like “i'm afraid it's serious... you have the transgender you're going to die unless you take these hormones”.
i had a friend who sort of understood how medical transition worked, and explained it very bad to me. telling me you had to go into the doctor's office every two weeks for an estrogen injection (i think they didn't know pills existed, and they didnt know you could do injections at home). which sounded like a lot of work to me. They didn't explain what being trans was though, they just explained medical t