In Praise Of The 3-D Social Media Experience

“Our door is always open. Our house is safe. Coffee can be on in minutes, and a kitchen table is a place of peace and non-judgment. Anyone who needs to chat is welcome anytime. It's no good suffering in silence. We have some food in the fridge but can order out, coffee in the cupboard, we also have wine. With listening ears, shoulders to cry on and love to share, we will always be available...you are always welcome!! This is an old value that has been lost to technology...a text, FaceTime, or emoji is not the equivalent of making time for those we love or care about!

We may have our differences, but WE ALWAYS HAVE YOUR BACK!"

I don’t know who originally created what you see above. I see this kind of stuff of all the time on Facebook. And usually tend to write a lot of it off as nothing more than sincere sounding clickbait.

But particular piece was in a post from my friend Pamela Langlois.
 Pam and I used to work for the same organization called Rapport, for a number of years. Pam proofed everything I wrote and saved my careless ass a number of times.

She is also a good Facebook friend, and a very thoughtful person. So when I noticed this post from her. I read it carefully, as I hope you will too.

My comment on this, which is really the theme of this post, was as follows.

The most gratifying experiences I have had on social media have nothing at all to do with the actual web sites or emojis or all the other superficial crap. It has to do with meeting up with people in 3-D and really getting to know each other. After you do that, your appreciation for that person within the confines of social media is deeper and more profound. Everybody who lives close enough to anybody that they are friends with on Facebook, should make it a point to meet, and really find out about each other, preferably over coffee or whatever.

Me

I never set out in social media to meet anybody. The best I was hoping for was an audience to read my blatherings.

Little did I know that over the years, several of these 2 dimensional relationships would turn into 3 dimensional ones. Not just catching up with old friends like Dean Raynor, Terry Lewis and Frank Caruso, but also arranging to meet up with and get to know in person folks like Don 🐝 Kerr