I saw on this mornings news that we apparently lose at least one friend a year.
This means I must have been really careless along the way because I’ve lost far more than that over the last 4 years.. Meh, this move should rectify that little oversight.
What really interested me though were the little voxpops of people on the street choosing whether people were more or less friendly nowadays compared to years ago. Every single one of them stated clearly ‘Less friendly’ and on the emails a German lass said that English people were very hard to get close to.
So.. Is it a cultural thing, an age thing or merely editing and perspective?
I agree that people are far more wary of strangers these days, our much vaunted multi-culturalness has raised more barriers than it’s dissolved in my opinion. You can’t force people to be tolerant of the beliefs of others and anything ‘different’ will be viewed with either amusement or distrust. That being said, does that make us so very different from the generations before us?
I think not.
I believe that people were no more friendly 30-50 years ago than they are now, they just had a different framework in which to classify relationships.
Sliding morals are the smallest of changes we’ve witnessed as a community, the internet has made friendships bloom across the continents where before they would bloom through closer contact with a distant acquaintance. Yes, online people are a little less guarded than they are face to face – I’m not a psychologist so I couldn’t even begin to guess why this is so, but the facts as I see it show that we are not less friendly now than we were ‘then’ we’ve merely changed the ways in which we conduct our friendships.
City folk have always appeared less caring than country folk – that hasn’t changed. What has changed is that it seems less and less likely to find strangers talking to each other in a meaningful way; the conversations have dried up, unless it’s about the latest reality show (or comedy catchphrase) strangers of this generation find it difficult to connect to others through the spoken word.
Is that in part due to the deterioration of the English language? Is the language deteriorating? I’m not really qualified to say, but on this blog at least my opinion is the one that counts and I feel that it is.
What started as a slow take up of mashed up words such as ‘innit’ and the overuse and misuse of words such as ‘like’ has progressed into a whole new subset of the English language, ‘Americanisms’ abound and ‘ghetto speak’ has found it’s way into the mainstream. The ‘yeah but no but yeah’ generation are doomed in my opinion, even online the language is given less than the respect it deserves – txt spk is rife and I feel it is a real indicator of a persons personality, their age, likes and dislikes.
I know that if I comes across the profile page of a person using predominantly txt spk and capitols, I’m unlikely to have anything in common with that person – I immediately assume that under favourite TV shows they will list things like ‘Jackass’ ‘Bo selecta‘ and ‘Big Brother’ and that music will feature someone like the black eyed peas (the music is ok, shame about the fans) they won’t like to read and will make some kind of joke about the fact – as though this is the logical reaction to being asked for a book recommendation and they will say their favourite pass time is ‘getting drunk’
I dislike txt spk immensely.
On the plus side, the conversationalists are not going out without a fight – Theodore Zeldin (founder of the Oxford Muse) has organised a ‘party’ for his 75th birthday and anyone who can get there is invited. Sadly I only found out about this today so I’ll be unable to attend but for those of you in London today between 12:00 and 19:00 head over to:
THE LOUISE T BLOUIN INSTITUTE
3 Olaf Street
London
W11 4BE
Phone +44 20 7985 9600
Fax +44 20 7985 9671
All he asks is that you converse with a stranger on one of the topics on the menu. Sounds good to me, it’s free, there’s refreshments on offer and you get to have a proper chat – what more could you want on a wet and miserable afternoon in London?
Here’s my theory of the Internet Friend as opposed to the RL friend. Usually internet friends feel safer in the aspect that you actually see them, and as a result, Internet friends tend to share more and thus you develop a sound friendship. In real life, you make friends, and then another friend will say something about the new friend. This happens a lot less online.
So I feel more comfortable with my online friends.
Just an opinion.
Actually, we are becoming less friendly. A great article details how the advent of internet, chat groups, and other modern contrivances has led us into 7 habits of social skills loss. Their main point was this:
Because we can find like-minded people on the internet–same interests, same hobbies, heck, even same political views–we lose our ability to compromise with people who don’t. It was harder when you could only make friends with people in the same geographical area because you didn’t have such a large sampling of people to choose from. You basically had to learn how to be friends with people who wouldn’t agree with you.
Now if we don’t like someone we just retreat back to finding people who do on the internet instead of working it out.
I’m definitely not one to comment on the state of this right now. Just in the past week, I ditch three “friends” because I found that they were all liars. Sucks. I hate trusting people so easily. I do like my net buddies though – the distance makes it harder for them to screw up my life! Jokes, I got jokes!