If there’s one thing a Ngāpuhi likes, it’s arguing a case. Unfortunately for everyone else, I’ve always got one.
We were promised that phones would make us more connected. Instant messaging arrived and, for once, the name did exactly what it said on the tin: messages became instant. You no longer needed a landline, a stamp, a mailbox, or three business days to tell somebody you were thinking about them. Suddenly, in the span of a few minutes, you could congratulate a friend on the other side of the country, check in after an important day, or tell someone you were thinking of them. Nowadays, all of the above can be achieved by forwarding a funny video.
But before all of this, communication was more deliberate. The pool of people you could reach was smaller. You had phone numbers, not catalogues of friends. More importantly, you had to actually decide who mattered enough to call or send a letter to. There was a degree of intention anchored into communication that is difficult to replicate when everyone is permanently available.
Communication became cheap, immediate and almost entirely frictionless. And we became unbelievably comfortable with completely ignoring each other.
Seen By Everyone, Heard By Nobody
The strangest part is that nobody has actually disappeared. You can watch somebody’s life unfold in real time without having a conversation with them for months, years even. Social media has made communication the antithesis of communication itself: you like a story – tap the little heart, watch half of it, and move on. Social media has perfected the art of letting somebody know we saw their life without us actually bothering to enter it.
Social media-etiquette has become its own bizarre mechanical bull, and most of us have apparently agreed that the rules are simple: hold on when it is convenient, fall off when it isn’t, and never ask why someone stopped riding. There’s a meticulous, unspoken social contract in which everyone is entitled to access while not at all obligated to reciprocate. Social media is a fleeting, belligerent place at times, where attention is given freely one second, and withdrawn unceremoniously the next.
That juxtaposition matters because friendship has never been built entirely out of grand gestures, has it? Rather, it is the little acknowledgements that keep a relationship beating: remembering the exam, asking how the date went, checking up on their family, sending a photo that reminded you of them. None of this is difficult, and that is why its absence says something.
BRB, Starting a Fan Club
I’m embarrassed to admit that I have multiple conversations sitting on my phone of me making repeated attempts to participate in somebody else’s life without much evidence that they are interested in participating in mine. You can congratulate, ask questions, send love and keep the conversational door open, and still: delivered. It’s like being a backup dancer in someone else’s legacy tour. Except, really you’re standing in the crowd. #fanbehaviour
I think that is the part we’ve become far too comfortable pretending not to notice. A friendship cannot survive indefinitely on one person providing the audience, the questions, the congratulations and the conversational CPR. At some point, the asymmetry stops being incidental and starts forming the architecture of the relationship. It gets to a point where I have to ask myself: am I someone’s friend, or merely their audience? Should I start a fan club?
Do Not Disturb, Ever
We have never had more ways to reach each other, yet somehow, reaching someone now feels like an imposition. Social media has become the Olympics of having as many friends as possible without having to put in much maintenance effort, and our phones double as a numbing tool for anything that requires us to sit still. It’s clear now that instant gratification has ruined us – we’ve mistaken constant access for actual connection. If this is what “convenience” looks like, I’d sooner bring back inconvenience: the landline, the stamp, three business days, and a walk to the bloody mailbox.
The phone was supposed to make reaching people easier. Perhaps it did, without promising that anyone would reach back. Maybe phones do work both ways, after all.
Long Live the Question
