During the last two week, when I have been dealing with a minor health issue (but staying home out of the cold weather), I’ve had time to myself, without interruptions. I never allow myself to be bored; there is ALWAYS something to do. My voice was hardly above a whisper so chatting on the telephone would have been annoying to my friends. My husband was enjoying the relative silence … he didn’t need to wander out to his shop to escape my continuous chatter (I do take the occasional respite to catch my breath … honest!).
What I did do was spend quite a bit of time on The Hill, trying to catch up on long-time friends, meet some people who I only knew by their username, and introduce myself to some new people that I had not yet crossed paths with in my ‘wanderings’. I visited pages of people who were active, but their list of friends was very short; others who had been members for a much longer time and had hundreds of people in their List of Friends. I checked to see who was having a birthday this month, and stopped by to give them my good wishes, and I checked to see if I could welcome someone who had just arrived to our cyber community. What I saw created questions in my mind: Why so few friends? How does a person develop a friendship with hundreds of people, or are they competing with someone to have the longest list? Why do some say that they aren’t accepting new friends, and some people have their pages blocked, visible only to those who are friends. I couldn’t leave a ‘Happy Birthday note, perhaps meet someone who had similar interests to me, or just leave a friendly note to offer some help if they had any questions. I wondered why they were here or what happened that they felt they had to hide behind a “locked” page.
In times past, I have talked to people who only wanted to be friends with those they knew from another Social Network Site; I have heard of some who hide so that they don’t have to listen to anyone else’s opinion; and I have helped people who blocked their page because they didn’t know how else to stop harassment from another person. This community is intended to be a friendly community, and has tried to give guidelines to maintain the integrity of the site, but also give latitude to creativity. Why are there people here who want to run the site to THEIR liking, even though they have no ownership. Why is it so hard to comply with the guidelines?
Years ago (and I’m amazed to remember how many years), we had Pen Pals in school, arranged by our teacher who found kids our age in a far away country, to whom we could write letters, send photographs, and learn about their home and country. Many, many of those pen pals became very close friends, even though we would not likely ever meet them in person. For me, that is what NOTH has become. I have developed friendships with people in a variety of countries, whom I will never meet. Our friendship would not have had a chance to begin if my page would have been blocked. And, if there is a difference of opinion, talk it out! We’re all different, and this world would be a boring place if we were all the same.
I hope to hear from you ... why are you here? I hope it is to meet new friends, and not because you want to show others about how smart you are, and how independant you want to be. Those attitudes get old real fast! Try this ... ask someone you just met to tell you one interesting experience in their life that I wouldn't have read about. It can be the start of an interesting conversation.
Tags: Friends Opinions Groups
