Why we should be real online
Most of us use
the internet
every day;
increasingly, it’s
most of the day. And the more
time we spend online, the
more disconnected we can
feel from the world around us.
That’s because we still draw
a distinction between what
happens online—friendships,
romance, even how we express
ourselves—and what happens
‘in real life’ (that’s IRL, in geekspeak).
We might be happier if
we recognise how false that
distinction is, says Alexandra
Samuel, director of the Social
+ Interactive Media Centre
at Emily Carr University in
Canada. Online interactions
are not fundamentally different
from offline conversations, she
says. We’re still human beings,
having human conversations in
human communities.
“To say that ‘reality’
includes only offline beings,
offline conversations and
offline communities is to say
that face-to-face matters more
than human-to-human,” says
Alexandra. “It’s time to start
living in 21st century reality:
a reality that is both on- and
offline. Acknowledge online
life as real, and the internet’s
transformative potential
opens up.”
8 reasons to be real online
1. When you commit to being your real self online, you
reveal parts of yourself you never dared to share offline.
2. When you visualise the real person you’re about to email
or tweet, you bring human qualities of attention and
empathy to your online communications.
3. When you take the idea of online presence literally, you
can experience your online disembodiment as a journey
into your mind rather than out of your body.
4. When you treat your Facebook connections as real
friends instead of ‘friends’, you stop worrying about how
many you have and focus on how well you treat them.
5. When you take your Flickr photos, YouTube videos and
blog posts seriously as real art, you reclaim creative
expression as part of your life.
6. When you treat your online attention as a real resource,
you invest your attention in the sites that reflect your
values, helping those sites grow.
7. When you spend your online time on what really matters
to you, you experience your time online as an authentic
reflection of your values.
8. When you embrace online conversations as real, you
imbue them with the power to change how you and
others think and feel.
Alexandra Samuel, www.alexandrasamuel.com
Source : www.blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/07/10_reasons_to_
stop_apologizing.html
