Social Networking and the Perfect Storm

It's been a long time since I've posted here.

I find that I often explore a new tool, crawl inside of it and make it home for awhile, then move on.  There's a lack of friction with so many of the social networking tools.  I don't want to date, toss a shout out to a new band, or increase my network.  I don't think anybody hanging out over the Twitter watercooler really gives a damn about what I just put in my coffee or fed my cats.  In first life I'm a public figure, so in my second one I find myself compelled to hide.  Running a successful business means being swallowed whole by IMs most days in Second Life, and the lack of any truly tangible privacy tools there makes it really damned tough to get a day's work done.

So, I became a bit of a hermit.  Okay, a lot of one.  And I liked it.  (And yes, I admit that it's a real hardship holing myself up with Baron frigging Grayson to build and play ... ~cough~)

I really have enjoyed reinventing myself as a recluse the past two years.  I'm a workaholic, and having a partner that shares the same insane work ethic and obsessions has made it all the easier still.  So much for the best laid plans ~grins~

Second Life has been a grand retreat, but the past few months I'm finding myself drawn into a very different kind of playground: one that doesn't exist in a single online community, but rather spanning a handful of mixed media tools and sites.  It started when Baron rekindled a love of seeing the world through old film cameras again.  He began posting notes and discoveries on his own blog here, and some rather cool, kindred spirits were gathering round.  Several were people we'd aleady connected with in Second Life as customers, and those connections were rarely more than a handful of brief encounters because of the tendency to cultivate a precious reclusiveness for the reasons I talked about above.  But I noticed something odd happening here.  In sharing a picture and some personal nugget, we were swapping stories.  It wasn't a transaction.  There was no obligation on either end.  It didn't demand lengthy, real time responses, dropping things in the middle of an inspired work session to reply.  No, this was more like slinking down into a favourite old chair in a beat-up pair of slippers with a big mugga joe in your hand, and quietly inviting familiar hearts in.

This began to spill over onto Flickr when we started posting pics there too.  Same faces.  Same fun, easy-going way of connecting.  People that I once thought of as customers I now think of as friends.  You see there's this odd little backyard fence, and it doesn't inhabit a space between just two yards, but bridges many, making them feel like the same kind of small, intimate shared space instead of some overwhelming digital geography.

omidyar.net, Second Life, Vox, Flickr, Twitter ... they all feel like rooms in the same house right now.  Where before I once dreaded the demands placed on my time by the human interaction, I now find myself craving it.  I watch Thaumata's video blog about her grandma Dorothy and am moved in ways I cannot describe.  I see this tender, vibrant person, and not just a name on a posting.  I watch Arteer romp through digital playgrounds and master them and make them so much fun.  I see her pictures on Flickr and her little notes and often end up laughing or connecting to some idea in some new way, and I love it.

It's sort of silly to just share these two women, just two names, but they are both such marvellous examples of the very thing that made me want to come back and post today:  a sense of kindred spirits with elbows on the kitchen table, and people I'd love to know in first life.  Zeke Poutine, Riversong Garden, Pam Omidyar and Callie Cline were people I connected with that way several years ago, and the ability to dive into Second Life together and culitvate our relationship in new ways was pretty damned incredible at times.  Okay, so I admit that having Zeke as a fairygodmother-in-garters (her words, not mine, but damn are they good!) with the same insane fetish for chocolate has less to do with social networking and more to do with Adventures with the Estrogen Army, but that's another post for another day, and my five minutes are up.

Would love to hear how others are thinking and feeling about connecting simultaneously through mixed media and networks.  Maybe you'd consider sharing some of your own favourite digital haunts with me here?