Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Getting out on the inside

Page: 1(2)

Less searchable M0rd4nt

17:39 / 21.04.02

I tend to maintain [social connections] for long stretches and then pull back for reasons still unknown to me. Or not even pull back, necessarily. I disconnect. Or fail to maintain. Or basically just not really put forth the effort necessary. I'm aware of the events in my life that have made me this way and I recognize the problem and I'm desperate to fix the problem, so hopefully I'm on my way towards fixing it.

Well, mega props to you- you've accomplished what's often the hard part: recognizing a pattern of behaviour, and setting out to remedy it.

The thing that's helped me most is to keep a mental record of who I've seen and when I've seen them, so that I can chase up contacts and I don't let people fall by the wayside. (You know how it goes: you don't call someone for a couple of months and by the time you get around to it they've moved house/lost their mobile/joined the Exodus Collective/become a Trappist monk, etc.) I guess, looking back, that I've treated my social life in the way that I would treat any other project: working out what my goals are, and trying to work out what's stopping me from attaining them. That might sound rather clinical in this context, but it worked.

Maybe keeping a rough journal of your social life would help?

Murray Hamhandler

02:16 / 26.04.02

And on a kind of different tangent... It occurs to me, now that I'm beginning to give the matter some thought, that my Barbe-socialization is hindered to a great extent by the lack of faces. Beyond my usual problems with socialization (which are admittedly numerous), I've always had a problem w/socialization that was not face-to-face. Like on the phone, for instance. I can't carry a conversation on the phone. I have no idea what's going on on the other end of the line when I can't see the person's body language. I need to be in the same space w/the person I'm talking to for things to really click. So it's a really big problem here. I've noticed, for example, that far too often I read through the posts in a given thread w/o really paying attention to who's saying what. So I don't haven't really cobbled together a personality in my head for a lot of people here. And I don't think that that reflects badly on anyone or that it means that anyone's necessarily personality-less on the board. It's just that it's so hard for me to get a feel for people who I can't really interact with in meatspace. It's really pretty frustrating, to be honest. Is this a problem for anyone else?

There's also the issue of only really being able to be on the 'net for 1-2 hrs. a day, but that's more a temporary access problem than anything else. It does limit my time here, though, and how much of myself I can really invest in becoming a real part of the board... I'll quit now, before I get too mushy and touchy-feely.
Arthur Sudnam, II

03:18 / 26.04.02

I feel the same way after all this time. I sometimes think it's like feeling grown-up.

MaximusOverdrive

05:00 / 26.04.02

yeah, with school and everything, despite being a member here for just around two years (under two different ficsuits) i find i only have about an hour a day during a good and slow school day to really post and speak to people. leaves me feeling a little left behind so to speak. nothing much can be done about that, outside of the upcoming summer break and more time to come with that. perhaps a little "itroductions" kind of thread, as the Lith always seems to have every couple of months or so would be nice. get all of the wallflowers better acquainted with the senior class of the Lith. then again, i've always been the kind of poster that will just drop in his opinion, asked for or not.

then again, i like the idea of a Barbelith prom. everyone show up in their best gear, all decadent and sexually charged, ready for an evening of depravity and anti-establishmentism, all combined with the inate angst of high school. could be fun. now who would be my date?

08:37 / 26.04.02

i'm not sure anyone feels on the 'inside'. when people were trying to work out if there was a barbe clique, the answer was a fuzzy 'yeeees....' without really knowing who qualified. no one i have met from barbe irl is mr/ms confident and self assured. i'm often here but i'm too spikey to ever be anything other than an outsider.

Page: 1(2)