The Appeal of the Internet and My Subsequent Addiction

Now, I can’t speak for other Third Culture Kids out there, because for all I know they are far, far better at dealing with technological addiction than I am, but the internet and social networking sites like Facebook and online community forums are a pretty important aspect of my social life. Sounds sad? It is, but not in the way that you might think.

The transience of a TCK lifestyle means losing friends. Sure, we can agree to be pen pals, to write regularly, and to visit often… and we do, but it’s not the same. Things change, people change, life happens. In international schools we frequently saw the arrival of new friends just as quickly as we saw the departure of others. For my part, departure from university meant another relocation, as did my departure from an old job.

While it’s a knee-jerk reaction to feel some degree of self-pity, mainly for the circumstantial (rather than personal) inability to maintain lifelong friendships and the lack of that connection that makes it easy to name who will be in your imaginary bridal party, there’s very little I can really complain about. Sure, I feel wistful when I witness lifelong friendships and connections in action, and of course I get homesick when I’m at my boyfriend’s parents’ house having dinner. But a lot of that is counteracted by the sheer volume of people I have met in the time that I have moved around.

The old adage “quality not quantity” has less relevance to me when I consider myself lucky to know a broad range of people, personalities, cultures, and backgrounds. While I may not be able to ask all of them for a favour at the drop of a hat nor may I be close enough to attend important life events, that is a huge number of people from whom to learn. And, if you’ve read this blog, you know that self-improvement sits very high on my list of personal priorities. I remember what I respect or like about every person that has ever entered my life (even if they may have grown or changed), and an occasional browse on Facebook reminds of whatever connection we used to have. Still, while it certainly serves to alleviate those compressing feelings of loneliness or wistfulness, it’s not what many people would define as a “real” friendship.

But that’s pretty much why I suffer a bit of an addiction to the internet. Online community forums serve to provide me with the one thing I have not experienced in my life: a very weird kind of stability. Wherever in the world I (or they) go, the manner and place we met remains the same. Our manner of interaction does not really change apart from some in-person visits, but by and large I can go online and talk to familiar people in a way that I have always spoken to them.

Sure, we get comers and goers in online communities, too, but the ones that stick around are usually the ones who do because they get something out of it, too. Either an escape, a place to flaunt another aspect of themselves that they don’t want to share in person, or just a way to pass the time. And quite frankly, if relationships are built through the community, they tend to persist past and beyond it, becoming friendships that experience frequent visits and online chats.

In a way, it makes it less scary to move around, because I know I always have a place to vent my insecurities, gain (sometimes questionable) advice, share insight, and just shoot the shit. The internet, if you will, provides a very strange sense of persistence, because no matter where you are, you can still connect on the very same place you met. And even though it’s little more than bits and bytes and pictures of butts, I value it because it’s familiar and comfortable, and there are people there who know and understand me on a variety of levels.

This is not to say that an online community can replace interpersonal relationships that take place “locally” or in person. What with my previous, horn-tooting posts about the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication in all its forms, it would be remiss of me to claim that an online relationship is more important than a real-life one for people in my situation. I see a balance in the two, really, where one offers the stability and comfort while the other offers that face-to-face interaction that allow for genuine closeness. Sure, my own boyfriend transitioned from one to the other, but that’s because he’s my boyfriend and I made the decision to relocate to where he (and, incidentally, others in the community) happened to live.

There’s no doubt that this is “weird” to a lot of people. From their vantage point, I can understand that. Those who have experienced strong (and perhaps lots of) long-time friendships that last may not quite understand the value of an internet community. They can enjoy it, sure, for previously stated reasons, but they may not come to view as necessary as I do, for perfectly valid reasons.

The juxtaposition between an online friendship and a face-to-face one was captivating after I moved to Perth. Back in Shanghai I still experienced nomadic friendships, especially when I saw our core group deplete in numbers from 20 to about 7 prior to my own departure. On moving to Perth, the feeling is different. Many people have lived here all or most of their lives and can trace current, important friendships back 10, 15, even 20 years. (I have known people for that long, but I can’t say we are particularly close.) It is intimidating to observe and foreign to try to understand, and I crave to experience it, not just to know what it’s like, but to learn from it.

I made an interesting observation to my sister the other day, when I mentioned that she wasn’t great with first impressions, but she sure as shit knew how to keep people around if they stuck around to begin with. My case is the opposite, where I make great first impressions, but over time people tend to find out what an asshole I really am. I attribute at least part of this difference between us to her own TCK lifestyle, where she spent long periods of time in two countries (Manila for 5 years and Beijing for 6.5 years), whereas I myself spent the worst 5 years of my adolescent life in Manila, and graduate from high school in Beijing after only 2.5 years. Her sense of stability may be far stronger than my own. Plus, she’s awesome. With her, once you’re in, you’re in for life.

So for me, the necessity was in making good first impressions, because that’s technically all I needed to do prior to my golden sheen wearing off, at which point it’s time to move on, anyway. Ergo, I envy my sister and others who have that “lastability,” maintaining connections for such a long time, over so long and through so much. You could presume my family should stand as a testament to this ability, but the thing is, it’s much easier to walk away from a friendship than it is to walk away from family. And really, our family is close because every time we moved, we only had each other, which meant we relied on each other for that familiarity and comfort that we missed in every other aspect of our lives.

But I digress. The point is, I do wish that people would stop ridiculing internet friends, at least in cases like mine. In a way, a kid ostracised for feeling different may find comfort on the internet, where he or she can find others with interests or personalities like their own, and know that they are not alone. It’s comforting, sure, and empowering. I would support it in controlled doses. But that kid should not rely on the internet for such comfort, either, because there is stuff to learn from people who are different from you, too. (Such as how to actually socialize in spite of your differences.) Online communities, as with most things, are great. For me, they are almost indispensable. But they are not and should not be my only social outlet or source of interpersonal exchange, and nor should that be the case for anyone else.