I've always loved a good mystery but studies suggesting we are becoming increasingly lonely flies in the face of all the instant communications available to us. What is going on?
Actually, it's more than a mystery. It's a paradox impossible to ignore in coffee shops, libraries, public transportation, baseball games, the beach, the car, you name it. Choose your site and it's there. Heads down, everyone. Let's ignore each other while pretending to be friendly as we further tailor our personas by way of the often badly-written word and retouched photo. We haven't had this much fun since the last phony resume.
Who would have thought that a song written nearly eighty years ago would best describe the solitude suggested by studies. It was Irving Berlin who wrote "All Alone" whose point of view was that a lot of lonely people were waiting by the telephone. In those days, the coin-operated version offered communications a wondrous mobility of sorts. We've traded the phone booth for the cell phone--a more convenient means of communication yet lacking the romantic effort it often took to hoof it to the phone and set up a meet at the Oyster Bar, under the clock, or at Ricarrdo. One wonders how many among us practice a self-con suggesting that a multiplicity of fast communications can replace the reality of a face-to-face relationship. How many among us upon hearing an "alone" song (there must be at least two dozen) immediately think: "hey, they're playing my song."
The loneliness studies today are impressively scary. One done in 2010 by AARP found that 35 percent of adults more than 45 were chronically lonely--up from 20 percent a decade earlier. That suggests Facebook (launched by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004) isn't doing what it is supposed to be doing: making us giddy with the understanding we have so many friends. Further, another study suggests 20 percent of Americans (60 milion) are unhappy with their lives because of loneliness.
I once tested loneliness' first cousin, isolation, at Wrigley Field, a pretty noisy place--particularly if you normally sat in the bleachers where, as Bill Veeck observed: "Here, the beer is colder, the fans much smarter and you can see better." Retired from the Chicago Tribune, I was invited more than once to watch the Cubs from the firm's sky box high above third base. I finally accepted the offer trading banter with the Bleacher Preacher and other habitues of the then cheap seats for the air conditioned comfort and free booze of the corporate digs. It's pretty rare of me to pass up gratis sauce and I managed three innings, then left never to return. It was awful; there was no noise other than that emanating from the TV while the occupants provided the kind of un-knowledgeable commentary also available at any World Series game.
One has to wonder about such things as touching each other to convey feelings. While there are no statistics thus far, it does seem that our intense desire for digital connection is going too far when we spend much more time in isolation touching and feeling a tiny screen rather than each other. Fingers that once walked through phone books now glide over i-pod touch as we don head phones to make certain we're not sharing the experience while our ears are assaulted by noise accompanied by lyrics either repetitive or boring. Ah, but what control is ours.
A case can be made that limiting each Twitter to 140 characters is working a remarkable hardship on both our language and the people who use it. With class warfare a reality as we gird ourselves for six more months of the White House Marathon, is it possible that further class warfare is developing between the Facebookers, the Tweeters and the Bloggers? As a member of the Blogging class, I'm in what is probably a second tier aristocracy of computer communications bearing in mind the significance of Pulitzer-winning Huffington Post, Politico, the Daily Beast and others of the upper echelon. On the other hand, the often misinformed and misguided production by Tweeters and Facebookers is staggering and we won't even discuss the tearing asunder of our language largely through laziness.
Since this is an era in which we place almost all screw-ups at the feet of the President, I think it quite likely that John F. Kennedy bears some responsibility for all that is going wrong with fast communications spelling although his sentence structure was, largely, exemplary with a good sense of rhythm. Kennedy, as we have learned, was a terrible speller and purposely wrote illegibly when he couldn't come up with correct spelling. Let us now refer to all lack of legibility as a Kennedystroke.
Online dating, of which Kennedy had no need had there been such a thing more than 50 years ago, is a strange term since the socializing is done offline. It is, perhaps, best exemplified by eHarmony whose television commercials promise tomorrow's nirvana through "matching algorithms." For a fee, eHarmony and other pimps of the communications skyways collect information about you, crunch the numbers, then pair you with someone "prescreened for deep compatibility across 29 dimensions." As Ohio University professor of economics William Fenzel once told me: "garbage in, garbage out."
The dubious science of matchmaking is getting a lot of criticism these days. Eli J. Finkel, an associate professor of social psychology at Northwestern University and Benjamin R. Karney, whose professorship is at the University of California, Los Angeles, have just published a critical article in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The study they and three others in the field produced suggests that 80 years of what makes people romantically compatible runs counter to the claims made by the eHarmonies.
Predicting compatibility is at best shaky made even more so since the sites fail to collect, according to the authors, some highly crucial information including job loss, financial strain, infertility and illness. Research indicates people tend to have difficult romantic relationships if they are emotionally volatile, were mistreated as children or abuse drugs or alcohol. The romantic brokers say dating pool eliminations are made (four marriages and you're out) but, once gain, garbage in, garbage out if lies are told.
The matchmaking people may have an even larger problem. With Twitter and Facebook achieving such enormous use, are people simply forgoing the sometimes awkward adventures made possible by the eHarmonies and doing end runs around the panderers?
Knowing there is nothing quite as absorbing as a boy meets girl story and curious about how quick communications might be utilized, I chanced upon what writers of film scripts would be inclined to regard as a likely Woody Allen plot.
Author, public speaker and CEO of something called Buyosphere, Tara (last name Hunt) began showing up all over the Internet a few years ago as Miss Rogue. I learned this through due diligence that also produced Carlos (last name Pacheco), a character whose perfect realization could be achieved in a delicious Latin fashion by Woody Allen, now a bit long in the tooth for the part but, hey, Woody likes young women.
Carlos began noticing Tara and her triumphs in seemingly anything Montreal or, as he eventually learned, San Francisco, Silicone Valley, New York and, probably, Poughkeepsie. Tara gets around having spoken at 126 worldwide conferences while traveling more than 476,000 miles. One of her major Blogging efforts was the unforgettable HorsePigCow and her authorship includes The Wuffie Factor. As late night TV host Jack Paar used to say: "I kid you not."
In all honesty, there is something voyeuristic about checking out someone like Tara, a very attractive 38-year-old Canadian recently profiled by Joanne Wilson, otherwise known as Gotham Gal. Photos (found elsewhere) by Eva Blue added to her mystique and Carlos, who lives in Montreal, became intrigued--particularly since Tara had returned there from San Francisco. One of the Blue photos is partcularly arresting. It features whipped cream and an interestingly tattooed Tara.
While it's not clear who made the first move, it is certain Tara and Carlos are self-described "slight Tweeters," a term that certainly qualifies as a major oxymoron. Upping the romantic ante, they first dabbled in Facebook, then consummated some solid back and forth Tweets during which he learned Tara's first major Internet identification was Miss Rogue, not to be confused with Sarah Palin.
Carlos (Woody Allen) was suddenly struck by disaster in the form of his Facebook account being hjacked by co-workers. The timing, two days prior to Valentine's Day, would have been disastrous except for a fortuitous Twitter sent by Tara and detailed by Carlos in his Blog of 2012/02/14. Tara, a party-giver of considerable renown in addition to her other talents, was into the details of a VD party (not what you think) that turned out to be a screening of Casablanca which the cinematically deprived Carlos had never seen. He did go, however, although he did not speak to the formidable Tara who, according to his highly confessional Blog was simply having pity on him. True to form, he did not see all of Casablanca but he did like the '20s theater.
According to Carlos, once there I saw her from afar, she was breathtaking (a photo is offered) & surrounded by at least half a dozen friends. At that point all that courage escaped and my shyness took over. Also, the last thing I wanted to be was that geeky fanboy from the Internet that showed up alone. Readers of a bygone era--particularly those who believe Casablanca the greatest movie of all, must be shocked, shocked in the realization that male readers of the Playboy Forum would have handled this one differently.
Aware of Carlos' social shortcomings, good sport Tara invited him to a neighborhood food-discrawl which took on heightened importance as I reminded myself that all this unrequited foolishness was taking place in Montreal, a city where food is as important as women to Hugh Hefner for whom I had toiled more than once in, of all places, Montreal.
Carlos is interesting and may be a split personality who on his Blog describes himself as "a social media voyeur, part-time jogger, reformed hard core gamer, sometimes Blogger and...." Then, again, he may be putting us on.
We are indebted to Blogger Brad McCarty, managing editor of The Next Web who describes himself as a music and tech junkie living in Nashville and who picked up on what surely had to be the passive Carlos' last shot at Tara. According to McCarty, Carlos engaged something called the Gowalla Message Service, then planted Gowalla's notes to Tara all over Montreal eventually taking her on a walking date of four hours about which there are no details. Some of those notes may have been particularly interesting but I guess we'll never know. Somehow, I can't see Woody Allen doing all that walking. A series of cab rides makes more sense.
McCarty adds: "The two have stayed together ever since, presently celebrating six months of a relationship together."
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Some afterthoughts about my communications prowl: While "awesome" retains its position as the most over-used word by the lazy, "amazing" is moving up. The computer and its various family members make it possible for us to be open books. Frankly, I prefer at least a little mystery.