MAKING FRIENDS ON THE INTERNET DURING A SENSITIVE TIME
The current world is the result of a profound and rapid change, far from anyone's imagination three years ago. An interesting feature of change is that we rarely notice it, and rarely discuss it or take it seriously as long as we are within it. It is only when we separate from reality and examine it in terms of context that we realize how much things have changed. Perhaps this is why people look at history and feel the world is so different, and most puzzling is how our ancestors accepted these differences as if they were self-evident. But we forget that we are also living in a confusing reality that only people in the past or future can see those confusions.
1. Why is it called the “new normal”?
What’s new about being normal? The first change, the attitude about "normal" when considering real life and the internet has changed a lot. The old complaints about the internet are suddenly now relevant to real life, and at the same time, the values ​​that were once used to promote reality are ironically now can only be found on the internet. For example, at this time, the internet is where we often see each other's faces in the fullest and most complete way, while outside all we see are their eyes. Even though we've been working together for two weeks, I still can't remember the company's new intern. To be more precise, I only have a vague idea about him, based on the photos posted on his personal page. Mr. Liem also said that on the day of the interview, he planned to ask them both to take off their masks to look at each other's faces, but felt it was rude. I myself, when typing the lines "take off the mask to see each other's faces" also felt a strange discomfort. On top of that, even a few years ago, the chalkboard sign that reads "The shop has no wifi, let's assume it's the 90’s and talk to each other like normal people" is still noticeable and trending on the internet as a satire about the lack of real-life communication between individuals of homo sapiens in the era of developed social networks; Today, it is not only outdated, but even quickly labeled as a "boomer joke" if it accidentally appears somewhere. We are actually communicating more with each other on the internet and meeting face to face is not only difficult, sometimes even troublesome. From small chats to important meetings, it's all done online for as long as it’s available. Members of a company even chat in public groups more than they do in real life. Communicating in cyberspace has become an option these days, and it is becoming more and more an attractive option to many people. Since this is an era of freedom of choice, it would be confusing for someone to attack my way of living just because I don't like hanging out if I want to meet friends. But even those who love tradition, due to the epidemic, today tend to be annoyed when seeing a picture of a group of people gathering happily talking without a mask, as well as more shy before the invitation to visit or to meet. Like parents who vehemently denounced their children's excessive phone use - and then fell victim to it - traditionalists are also getting used to communicating more, with more people, in cyberspace. Last year, I also knew of some families who chose to stop holding meetings during Tet even though it used to be a tradition that had never been postponed, because of the epidemic. Instead, everyone decided to video call in Tet. The above are not to support the view that spending more time on the internet is vital, or necessary, or superior, or any other evaluative adjective. If forced to give personal opinions, then I think they are relatively negative. The increasing popularity of having to spend more time online is not a manifestation of choice diversity, rather a lack of diversity as everything is simply a change from one popular lifestyle to another, and minorities often have to follow trends rather than really have the right to make a choice for themselves. So, even though people are staying at home and online more, I don't think everyone is happy with what's going on. And many will say they accept only a “temporary situation” due to another “temporary” agent, the epidemic. Temporarily not holding summer festivals for a year, temporarily limiting meetings for a year, and temporarily using the internet to replace everything for a year. This is what I want to talk about, we always think that the future will work for us instead of the other way around, and what is contrary to “forecast” will only be “temporary” events. This reality was something we couldn't have predicted three years ago, and now we continue to predict the future based on old foundations instead of drawing any lessons. People seem to be overly optimistic about stability and rarely notice changes. The power of change is that we rarely realize, and always think we can clearly visualize it. Predicting that the epidemic will end soon and things will return to “normal”, we are assuming that there is an equilibrium that maintains everything and that the world cannot deviate from it. In fact, the world has changed more than we can imagine, it is just this short life experience that makes each individual's perception of change poorly. If you lived a little longer, just 5 times as long as you did then, say 400 years, you would know that there was a time when the world believed in someone who claimed to be a "son of heaven" and that he or she had the power to determine seemingly everything. There was a time when women were truly inferior to anything we could imagine, and it was normal for someone to become a slave. You will see hundreds of wars, big and small, and epidemics, each lasting for decades, and then nothing will ever be the same again. You will know how old, traditional dishes like “banh mi” and “pho” actually have a short lifespan and are constantly being modified. You will also witness the gloomy atmosphere of the world in the Cold War, where people are so afraid of the end of humanity in nuclear war, a theme of many books, movies and a bunch of pessimistic songs. Everything I just mentioned is recorded in history books, and you may have read it, but you don't really feel anything, just as you won't feel anything even when you read it again. Lucky to be born in the most peaceful period in human history, a brief period from the end of the 20th century until now, we look to the future and the past with the same optimism. This also leads to another misunderstanding. Sometimes when we read the painful pages of human history, we also think how much the people of the past suffered and worried, how much they yearned for change, while living in the old order. Do you really feel moved when you look at the statistics on the number of people dying from the disease? Do you care about the number of people who die from traffic accidents or cancer? Do they affect you so strongly that you want to immediately go out into the street to call for change? If the answer is no, or a little, then know that this feeling is closer to the people in the past, as long as your background and theirs are similar. Of course we cannot say that the soldiers of World War II felt nothing, or the slaves felt nothing, just as we cannot say that a person injured in a traffic accident felt nothing, the same with a cancer patients lying in hospital beds after painful radiation therapy, but it can be said that the average person, at any given time, has a more similar perception of the world than everyone else often imagine. The problem with discussion posts like this, where I can write and you can read with a relatively relaxed attitude, or casual talking sessions discussing the world, or inspiration before entering a game of gambling, is that they are only played out in a normal state, by ordinary people. The gambler only started to feel dizzy and felt like the world was collapsing when he lost all the money he had accumulated for the whole year, only then that mood helped him see a pessimistic reality that was very different from the excitement before going into the game. Just like we only see ugly reality when actually being in a ugly state. I can't write this while lying on the hospital bed after radiation treatment for cancer, just as you can't read it if you are going through the same ordeal. This is the problem. The usual discourses we encounter every day often come from survivors, and it feels like that's all there is. Regardless of how diverse life is, with many people experiencing really bad feelings, and despite the fact that there is always a certain and large number of patients in the hospital who are living in poverty; the majority of those who are "still able to speak out and write out", are at least in a good enough state for them to think about almost everything, of which they mostly talk about an optimistic future and avoid negative things. The prevalence of optimism has led us to not only avoid hearing about loss, but also avoid talking about it. Joy is something we want to spread, while we want to keep our pessimism to ourselves, to avoid affecting others. It's going to be hard to say for sure, in the end, whether this will work for everyone, or for ourselves, especially when the reality is really turning for the worse. Since a huge part of the world's reality has always been ignored and avoided by anyone, we are no longer really sensitive and fully visualize the changing reality we live in. We can choose to talk or not about an issue, but we cannot choose to remove it from reality. Therefore, because the world we want to see and imagine is so poorly portrayed compared to the real world, the change of the real world also goes out of sight and gradually becomes alien to the people living inside. That is why the ancestors of the past, or those influenced by their ideas, will find it difficult to understand when those "entertainers" in the 21st century can hold so much power. Meanwhile, we, regardless of whether annoyed or not, have also indirectly admitted that it is normal for idols to attract a lot of attention, earn a lot of money and have a great impact on the masses, like an order as obvious as ever. A lot of current other orders aren't really "normal" in old contexts, similarly, the ones we feel are "abnormal" don't necessarily create discomfort with the past world. I want to mention this just to highlight that things are changing faster than we think, in fact they are always changing, rather than any balance that can help re-establish old orders. If equilibria really do exist, they are probably always shifting as well. So just as we three years ago did not think we would become who we are today, there is no guarantee that "tomorrow" everything will be better than today, and the future is a developed world. In the movies, the concept of a future where humans fight aliens and rule the universe, or where the world thrives and technology makes everyone happy, gradually transforms our world into new models such as those concepts of cyberpunk, black mirror or human conquering the stars… in many recent movies, showing that we are looking into a new future where indeed full of evolving technologies, but not all problems are solved. They just intertwine and complicate things, with many new problems rise alongside the old ones. Therefore, predicting the future of the world revolving around quarantine and epidemics for at least the next decade, is as unfounded as the way we thought the peace would last three years ago, but always consider it as a possibility. Black swans rarely happen, but it changes seemingly everything after it did. If it's impossible to predict the arrival of a black swan, at least get used to knowing that such a thing always exists.
2. The loneliness of the internet.
After all, what makes this weekend talk look like a regular midweek post? I think sometimes we should sit back and consider the context of the two of us meeting, to know where we are, what we are affected by, and therefore, how we should consider each other's status. Monster Box and readers meet in the internet age, whether thanks to YouTube or Facebook. Our relationships therefore also revolve around features of this context, and its development is new and different from traditional relationships, even if we realize it or not. Many old lessons have shown that it is not necessary for friendship on the internet to remain after meeting in real life, and conversely, real life intimacy doesn’t always be reproduced on social networks. The difference of these two "spaces" both helps us to do more and do less, when compared with each other. Each one has an extremely tight framework, and I think it is worth paying attention to learn about the nature of each, avoiding thinking that the internet space is an auxiliary place for real life, considering it as a newly discovered realm that is taking up more and more time. We live in two different places, in two different ways. The new space has helped people to express themselves more (I don't want to talk about whether this is good or bad), thanks to freedom from the narrow reality of physical space, which we previously thought was the only place we can live and survive. If you pay close attention, you will see that people on the internet, even though they behave incompletely, are still very alive, and we can still visualize the world just by rolling the mouse on the screen. Here exist short and broken sentences, deliberately hastily edited images, spontaneous ideas… and a host of other things that make no sense outside in real life; Things we've been taught not to do, yet manifest things we rarely show on the outside. They are impactful, emotional, and it's hard to see why we should consider them "virtual". Again, I don't want to talk about whether this is good or bad. Couples can communicate very differently in their inbox than what they usually say to each other outside, but it can't be said that this action is pointless and emotionless. They still talk outside, still chat on social media, sometimes the topics are intertwined, one can say that they are connected on both sides of reality. But in each place, we will find them showing more than the other, and at the same time, less than the other. Texting sessions for a whole night wasn't something that could be easily reproduced in the real world. At the same time, the feeling of sitting next to each other to talk about a certain topic is always lacking when messaging. I think I will save this topic for a specific research paper. The point here is that people are actually learning to live in the new reality, and society is being rebuilt within it. It can't be said that one is just a supplement to the other, which may be true for some individuals, but it is difficult to be certain that it is also universal. Since our relationship is a new form, in a new space, I think it's better to talk about building something new, instead of hanging around in the old. We live in a new world with new possibilities, it's time to talk about creating the future, and prepare to thrive within it. After all, being stuck together in a finite journey can't stop us from enjoying it together to the fullest. Let's talk about the loneliness of the internet. I've heard too much about studies showing a correlation between loneliness and the internet, between social media and depression. Let's temporarily ignore the scientific studies, and the real reason behind those figures, today we will approach in a different direction. The Internet is a wild world, and as such, it is not really friendly to everyone, especially to individuals who are used to living in a relatively complete civilized society. So the experience of loneliness here partly stems from the fact that we don't really know how to survive inside it. The real world isn't secure from the get go, and you'd be miserable if you were sent back to the day its structure started being built. The same goes for the internet, especially if you're still wandering around here innocently and aimlessly. Firstly, not even children are allowed to make mistakes. Here, everything is stored and nothing will ever actually disappear. "Words are but wind" are only true in the real world, while idle chat lines, or an impromptu status, always have the potential to be archived and spread to make things more complicated. Humans are flawed creatures, and this tension has created a relatively negative restraint. The scandals of sex tapes and a series of other controversies of the same type have only begun to arise since the internet age, which are passed on by residents every day to discuss and judge, as an elegant pleasure. Exposing others occurs at many levels, not always accurate or applied only to famous people, in fact, they include bullying at school, workplace that only a small group knows - and that small group is already too big for any individual to fall victim to it. Secondly, strangers are annoying. They are willing to stop by to say harsh words in the comment section, even bother to go poking at other’s personal pages or DM people to express their hatred. People who seemed to have nothing to do with each other's lives, by some strange motivation, put in a lot of effort to annoy each other. The problem with crowded places is that there will always be one group of supporters, and another against - with anyone, and with any opinion. So even if you did something right, there are always someone who see it as wrong, and another group that supports that person, all aimed at you. Thirdly, we are gradually losing our basic rights, due to too many strangers now having too many rights of their own. Perhaps the emergence of Google has created a confusing expectation of placing requests on the internet. Its residents here always assume that when they ask a question, others must answer. If they comment, the owner of the post must respond. They send messages that you have to read. If you refuse, it's seen as a sign of cowardice, or you're wrong, or you're too bossy and things like that. Fourthly, we don't know who we're dealing with. Sometimes you will be scolded by a middle school student, sometimes extremist groups that don't care about right and wrong, sometimes a series of clone accounts of just one person, sometimes simply people who have no idea what they said. Combined with the problems above, this is indeed troublesome. The real world is not like that. I think most people still know that we should be more forgiving of others, especially strangers. We know that it's not a good thing to sit back and talk bad about others, and we implicitly agree that gossip groups that engage in "exposing" conversations are not the type of people we should deal with. But chances are we've become what we hate when we're on the internet. We also know that people in the outside world never break into each other's houses uninvited, and everyone has the right to close the door and ask their guests out, just as there is no need to welcome people they don't like. But it's very possible that we ourselves are walking around on the internet and behaving as unsavory as an unruly person. Real society is designed to be safe, so that we are affected by strangers as little as possible. It's strange how we always know how to regulate that inner behavior, but quickly lose this ability when we step on social media. Perhaps the internet makes it possible for us to do more than ever before, and mistakenly thinks that all that we can do is reasonable. In the real world, we don't always have to spend time arguing with everyone. At the same time, if we want to talk to someone, we ourselves must be the first to show kindness and hope that kindness will help us get a response from them. Children want to ask their parents' permission to go out, students have questions to ask their teachers, opening up to strangers, or even simple questions like asking time or asking for directions... all need to be done in a polite and respectful way. The more valuable information one wants to ask for, the more effort one needs to put in. I'm not saying this behavior is all positive, but thousand-year principles of communication have their reasons. We should at least recall them, when dealing with strangers on the internet, especially since this is where we will spend more and more of our time and minds. When building Monster Box, one of the things we noticed was the emphasis on clarifying real values, within an environment that many people still consider virtual. We want to build a community of polite readers who at least know how to behave like they do in the real world. We can talk tensely or softly, slowly or earnestly, be frank or roundabout, as it is in the real world, but no disrespect or impoliteness is allowed. We want people to come into a discussion where no one is obligated to serve the rest, no one is forced to be “more polite” or “less polite” than anyone, and everyone has to be responsible for his words, and only his words. Only in such places can people be at ease, thanks to being surrounded by nice people, and most importantly, knowing that they themselves are a nice person. Freedom from tension and controversy, with just the bare minimum of requirements, helps mature and self-reliant individuals know that they are right where they need to be. We want to build Monster Box as a familiar cafe, a quiet library corner, a place where people can actively visit while walking on the internet, and always find what they are looking for there, as well as meet the person you want to meet there. To maintain such a place, building principles is absolutely vital, and we know that one of them is following real-world communication habits. So I don't know how many places you visit on the internet, how many places you hang out, and how noisy they are, Monster Box is a different place. The more places there are that are different from the rest, the richer and more varied your internet experience will be. Things don't always need to be the same. In a world rich and diverse, knowing where one belongs is one of the biggest secrets to helping people escape loneliness. Even if we don't know what the future of the world will turn out to be, we always need friends. Keep this in mind. #MonsterBox