The front porch, whether it was at a store or at a house, it used to be the place where life happened. Today we have done away with the front porch. We moved from living life with people to living in crowded loneliness. We have a million friends of Facebook and yet many people still feel alone. Social networking has become the new place were we connect, but we control it so people only see what we want them to see.
Part of me wishes that we could go back to the days of living life on the front porch, sipping sweat tea, and fanning ourselves because air condition wasn’t invented. Er, except for the air conditioner part. I couldn’t survive without AC. I would run myself into a hard object to knock myself out so I didn’t have to deal with the heat. Anyway…I wish we could go back to the days where we spent hours talking with one another instead of about one another. I wish we could go back to the time where people knew us and not just about us. I wish we could go back, but we can’t.
Because we can’t I say we become intentional about our connections in social networks like Facebook. I’ve often heard Facebook users say they love it because they can stalk people. It’s easy to look at pages and not comment. It’s easy to collect hundreds of friends and never talk to them. It’s easy to send flair (you know who you are), play games (stop kidnapping me), and update our status (rob is blogging at www.robshep.com). It’s easy but what if we used it to make meaningful, lasting connections? What if we decided to leave at least one meaningful comment a day to one of our bazillion friends. What if we used Facebook to help build community? Since Facebook is the gathering place of today what can we do to make it more personal and meaningful?
Concluded.
nice series rob. don’t think facebook will ever replace reall community, at least i hope not. i sometimes wonder who these people are that are requesting my friendom. oh well, join the clan. maybe one day we will chat.
I’m not sure the conversations on the front porch were actually more meaningful than the average facebook. There was a lot of gossip, story telling, and light-hearted humor. No TV; people were looking for something to do. In the process, they developed a sense of reliance on each other that people today may fear.
I read your front porch “series” and thought it was awesome…so I shared it with Billy. He said the same thing. Thanks for giving us that to think about. We think you should have it published or something. 😉
I think that Facebook and texting and e-mails and all of that other communication like it is helpful in expanding relationships and building community. But I think you do need relationships first. I really try to check in on people’s pages and encourage them or say hello or whatever as often as I can! My sister always says that Facebook is kind of like the 5 minutes in between classes in high school. I think it helps in this busy world to keep people connected. But I would not mind sitting on a porch with you and Mon drinking iced tea any day!