Online Communities Are Not Real Communities

 Recently I joined an online community as a way to connect with other Catholics, hopefully deepen my prayer life, and have some support in my spiritual journey. After twelve years on Facebook, I deleted my account two years ago after experiencing a growing dis-ease with both the platform and online interaction as a whole. And so there was some vacancy for me, both in terms of mental space and new-found time, that I found I had after giving up social media. Maybe it was time to revisit the online space and get engaged again?

I went through a kind of module orientation (virtual, of course) for this particular apostolate, watched the videos, learned the rules and etiquette of this particular community as well as its charism, and was a approved as a new member. The website was very well-done, professional and interactive; I made a profile, and within a few days my inbox was starting to be populated with "New Activity" or "New Discussion" notifications--people posting asking questions about prayer, or sharing something they had read, or bringing up topics for conversation. I joined in on a few discussions, even, and attended a Zoom meeting with hundreds of people involved in the apostolate to discuss a spiritual book.

After a few months, though, I started to feel the lack of real-world connection. My inbox filling up each day with people posting this or that, lots of topical 'activity' but no real meaningful connection with individuals, and just feeling like it had the potential to be a repeat of my years on Facebook--posting, checking, dinging, engaging, scrolling, and feeling ultimately unsatisfied and sometimes even agitated at the end of the day. I tried to remember the original reasons I got off in the first place, and saw that this was just a differently packaged experience from the same type of factory. 

Before I got off Facebook, the people I did stay in touch with I connected with and got their phone numbers before jumping ship. Some of these people became real-life friends, who I have met in person and/or talk or text with regularly. There are a few, though, that I find it strange I have no idea what they even look like in person, having never met them and the fact that they never had an online photo of themselves. I go back to this question of "what makes someone a true friend?" and, by extension, "what makes a bonafide community?"

I know for some people who are isolated, introverted, or geographically remote, online-internet-virtual communities may be a lifeline to assuage loneliness and feel connected with others of like-mind, even if it's through a strand of ethernet cable. They look forward to waking up and logging on to their computer and getting down to the business of posting, discussing, and engaging. 

I've thought about this a lot, and I keep coming back to this Matrix-like situation in which a collective of individuals online (on social media, in chat rooms, in online-only apostolates, etc) feel like it's so real, so true, and yet--it's still a mirage of reality. Pardon the crassness, but sex with a condom comes to mind. So close to what's real and true, and yet still a counterfeit separated from reality and fruitfulness by a fraction of a millimeter of rubber.

For someone like myself who is searching for deep, meaningful friendships that are of course Catholic, but even go beyond the topical to a kind of 'communing of souls' that St. Augustine writes so elegantly about, it's a constant source of frustration and disappointment. It reminds me of that film Her with Joaquin Phoenix in which he falls in love with an Operating System (OS), A.I. that seems to know him more intimately than anyone else. And yet, it's still the latex hangover of waking up and realizing that those feelings of intimacy are "always real, but never true."

I think Tommy Killackey in "Talking At Each Other" (Fraternus/Sword & Spade) nails it here:

"Friendships of virtue, by contrast, require a much deeper commitment and investment than those of utility of pleasure. The facade of the screen might not just limit things like physical encounter, but it also helps us avoid the vulnerability required of true friendship. [Roger] Scruton [in Confessions of a Heretic] again helps us here:

"By placing a screen between yourself and the friend, while retaining ultimate control over what appears on that screen, you also hide from the real encounter--forbidding to the other the power and freedom to challenge you in your deeper nature and to call on you here and now to take responsibility for yourself and for him" (Scruton, 96).

Put simply, intimacy and control cannot coexist. Social media always renders us in complete control, and whether we choose to click, scroll, watch, reply, like, or close our tab, we individually always have the power within our fingertips. Scruton goes on to say, 

"Risk avoidance in human relations means the avoidance of accountability, the refusal to stand judged in another's eyes, to come face to face with another person, to live yourself in whatever measure to him or her, and so to run the risk of rejection" (Ibid, 108). 

We might call this Scruton's warning against the risk of avoiding risk. The "risky" friendships that "call us out of ourselves [to] take up our crosses" were not built online, nor could they exist there exclusively. We may still interact online, but the soul of virtuous friendship where we risk encountering another can only occur offline. 

Friendships of utility may exist on LinkedIn, friendships of pleasure may exist in double-tapping our friend's latest post on Instagram, but as long as we maintain perfect control over the encounter, we cannot truly share life, encounter, risk, accompany, and be with anyone behind a screen, full stop." 

The maintaining of control, the lack of vulnerability, the inability to read body language, the unwillingness to engage outside the platform, absence of accountability--these are all things that I think lend credence to the position that online communities are not real communities. Or rather, maybe better stated, online communities are real but not true communities.

When I was quitting smoking I attended a Nicotine Anonymous meeting. I tried to find one in my area in person, but the lady who ran them formerly said there just wasn't enough interest in it in person. I went to a Zoom NA meeting instead. I can't describe it, but it left a lot to be desired, and I quit on my own without going to another one. Post-Covid, I have come to loathe Zoom for anything but the most utilitarian of work meetings.

Have you ever asked yourself why people are more lonely, more socially stunted (especially Millennials), more disconnected, more despairing today? You don't think maybe, just maybe, this type of contracepted "social" internet space contributes to that? Like, that your body could really use a hearty loaf of good bread to satisfy your hunger but instead you are sitting down with a bowl of Fruit Loops instead because that's what's in the pantry? We need to admit this "era of social media" was the Vatican II of social engineering, an novel experiment that was bad for society, failing to delivery on its promises and better suited for the scrap pile of history.

I feel like I have enough years--decades almost--of skin in this game and experience in the online world to be able to reflect on it with some street cred. I've played the game and been around the block, and I have nothing much to show for it, kind of like past one-night stands and and hookups where I was looking for connection, love, and yes, gratification and afterwards left emptyhanded. Always real, and never true. 

I don't know where this leaves me currently, only that my time in prayer and time with my family has become deeper, more heavy and yes, lonely at times, but in a good way--not empty, but real and painful because we are not meant solely for life here on earth but Eternity. I'm less willing to settle for counterfeits and Pavlov-like distractions now that I know what they promise and fail to deliver on, and I'm less inclined to try to fill up that loneliness with discussion/engagement/zoom/distraction for the sake of feeling connected to a ethereal community.