A couple of days after Thanksgiving, there was an article in the Boston Globe that posed the question: Have online networks rendered reunions obsolete?
Since Thanksgiving is usually a time for homecomings and high school reunions, it was a particularly timely question — even if it was one of those leading questions meant solely to provoke the reader (since the conclusion of the story is that, yes, reunions still have a place in today’s online-enabled world).
The real question is, how have Facebook, Web search, and other online and social media tools changed the way we look at reunions.
Reunions are a special kind of real-world meetup. At their core, they’re built around a pre-existing community of people, though the ties between the members of that community have faded in the intervening years. Built on top of that community is the reunion event itself, which is a temporary community based on geography and shared experience, and that recurs on a predictable basis. The group comes together for a night, then blasts back apart, until the next 5, 10, 20, or however many years.
What social networks have done is change what happens between those periodic meetups. Like the article says, if you want to, you can already know everything you need to know about old friends, enemies, and acquaintances (at least, the subset of folks who you want to keep tabs on, who are also on Facebook or findable on the Web).
For the most part, you already know if the Person Most Likely to Succeed actually succeeded. So if your curiosity is already satisfied and surprise isn’t as much of a factor, what’s the point in going to a real-world reunion?
As is almost always the case, real-world interactions enhance online community. It’s not just because of hors d’oeuvres, open bars, and the potential for drama and drunken hookups (though all that never hurts), but it’s because of physical presence, multi-sense perception, non-verbal cues — all that good stuff that you can’t get off the computer screen. It’s why even fancy video telepresence suites still haven’t fully replaced face-to-face meetings. And this isn’t a weekly status meeting — the fun of the reunion is the presence, not the information.
(This just isn’t going to change, until we get immersive virtual worlds with direct brain interfaces or other far-out sci-fi replacements for reality. And maybe even not then.)
Plus, you can see if a person’s online persona matches what they’ve got going on in the real world. Though no one lies, fibs or exaggerates online, right?
Then, flipping things around, the online community enhances the real-world interaction. When you have an idea of what’s going on in people’s lives, you have more stuff to talk about, so you can avoid bits of meaningless chit chat and get straight to the interesting stuff. (Not to mention, avoid stumbling into awkward conversations about messy divorces or guilty pleas.)
Lastly, there are reasons of pragmatism. Some people just aren’t on Facebook or the Web. And on the flip side of that generational thing — I suspect that the current crop of high school and college kids will just slide into using social media tools (and more importantly, the social media mindset) when their reunions come around — it’s just the way they use them in their lives.
Personally, I do have a major milestone reunion coming up next year — I’ve already started seeing a burst of friend requests on Facebook, from folks I haven’t heard from (or even thought about) in years. We’ll see how all this pans out, I guess.
Have the Internet and social networks had an effect on your own reunion experiences? Let us know how things turned out, and share a thought in the comments.
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