The Dance

It’s 7PM. The bar is too noisy. The air is too warm. The hard oak seat of the pub-chair has the softened finish of overworn lacquer – humid, spongy.

It’s 7:04. How are we going to recognize each other? I realize I don’t even know a real name. Will we really have anything in common? What if it’s completely awkward?

It’s 7:06. Eyes connect. A flash of half-recognition. “Are you looking for me?” I ask? “I don’t know, am I?” comes the response. The tall, long-haired geek-hippy drops his bag. I wonder if he's as nervous as I am. He takes a seat, flashes a self-conscious smile.

Our careful waltz begins.

I work in isolation, surrounded by pairs. Duplicates of everything: computers, screens, headsets, controllers. But there’s only one chair.

But just because there’s one chair does not mean I work alone, bereft of watercooler chat, workgroups and support. One of my five screens is dedicated to social interaction: 5 email accounts, 6 IM accounts, Twitter, Skype, Facebook, LinkedIn, forums.

The tendrils of my community reach out, overlapping and branching in a nervous system of communication: old friends, gamers, writers groups, professional contacts. The interconnections are complex and ever changing. They are dendrites and axons touching and sparking in unexpected ways. My work style involves strengthening the pathways, building links with these people constantly through the course of the 10 or 12 hours I sit at the keyboard, sliding in and out of distraction and productivity. There’s no real pattern to my day, to the network, to the interactions. That’s kind of the point. It's connected chaos. It works.

I never feel alone, or out of touch. Yet half of the people in this ether I have never met. Those I know face to face I see rarely. There’s a constant disconnect with everyone, the only difference is degree. At one end are people who remain identifiable but anonymous - faceless Internet aliases that exist solely to provide competition. Less ethereal are the people I know from walled gardens. With this central core of brethren there's an interaction, an exchange of the only thing of value in a connected yet disassociated world - ideas. Occasionally these faceless companions move one step closer becoming true correspondents, trusted, respected and admired. Friends.

But even here there often remains a final chasm that often remains to be bridged. The terrifying reality of being in the same place at the same time. Face to face, I'm required to look someone in the eye and acknowledge them as human beings.

Tens of thousands of years ago, I slunk with my proto-human ancestors as they approach the valley-bottom, eyeing the tribe across the river with trepidation and excitement: friend or foe? Will they respect our lands? Will we slaughter each other in a bloodbath of gustatory conflict? A month of millennia later, sitting in the Oakland pub, the same fight-or-flight precursors run through my blood, subdued only by super-ego control.

When it comes time for the first date, the more blind I am the better. I have a lifetime of meeting strangers to draw from. I have skills I learned as a toddler well ingrained. There’s no shared history, so there is no place to be but there, in this time, in this place. But when the connections are already soldered – conversations from the past, shared victories and defeats – I have no skills. In many ways it’s like meeting a celebrity or an author: you have this sense that you know the person, but you have none of the subtle cues and that make someone truly familiar.

Within seconds of meeting someone for the first time, I make value judgements. It’s inevitable. My brain classifies the newly presented person just based on how they look, how they talk. Do they shake my hand? Dive in for a hug? Stand off nervously? How do they stand? Do they smile? Do they make eye contact? My perception of who that person *is* is based in large part on those flash perceptions.

When I get to know someone through the Internet, the relationship is entirely cerebral. I know far more about how many of my extended virtual community think than I do about people in my hometown I see every other day. In some communities (such as this one) I literally read dozens of paragraphs a day, on a huge range of topics – communication that would take an entire lunchtime face-to-face, each and every day.

This week is GenCon, my annual face-to-face Hajj. While collecting only a few threads of my network, it remains a focal point of my year, and a time when I’ll be meeting yet more people face-to-face for the first time. Even more stressful, many of these people will be meeting each other for the first time in any context, virtual or otherwise. The streams will cross, and the results can be unpredictable. It’s nerve wracking.

Will the tribes be allies, or will they succumb to their intellectual fight-or-fight reflexes?

Hypothetical bloodbaths aside, I think I've finally learned to relax about the meetings of tribes. While people are different in person than they are online, they are rarely in conflict. While the online world lets people try on new behaviors, I haven’t made a habit of associating with the folks who’s online personas are that of the ingrate and griefer.

We pull the last foam off the bottom of the beer glasses. The group of unknowns has grown in the last few hours. Watches are checked, cell phones consulted. The dance is coming to an end, but nobody wants to be the one to stand up first.

Silence.

I stand up, proffer a hand. "It was great meeting you." I grab my bag, retrieve my glasses from the table. I make eye contact.

"Really excellent."

Comments

E Hunnie wrote:
McChuck wrote:

There's no slapping or tickling at a S&T, but am I to understand there'll be dancing now?

There has been slapping, tickling, and dancing at several S&T's, and I am pretty sure you have been the central part of most of it. There's a reason they call you Jazz Hands... several reasons, actually.

Thats dirty.

boogle wrote:
E Hunnie wrote:
McChuck wrote:

There's no slapping or tickling at a S&T, but am I to understand there'll be dancing now?

There has been slapping, tickling, and dancing at several S&T's, and I am pretty sure you have been the central part of most of it. There's a reason they call you Jazz Hands... several reasons, actually.

Thats dirty.

He's a filthy, filthy man.

That's hot.

Purple_Haze wrote:

Being 15 (which I feel like I mention every other comment) I haven't met anyone I've known online. I used to have quite a few online friends, until Valve, for some reason that I still don't know, shut down my old steam account. Since then I haven't really bothered again.

Well, 15 is a bit young to travel very far on your own I suppose. Don't worry, it's probably a matter of time.
I'm 26 now, and was 21 when I first met people I knew online.
Of course, there's a change of the times too - I only got a connection that didn't cost us half a fortune a minute in '99...(local calls cost money here too, so dialup was NOT an option)

I was eighteen when I first met someone I knew online-only IRL. Then I dated her for a bit, then we broke up then the webcomic the community was built around died and then I completely lost track of her.

The people I've met since then have been cool, but I've yet to date any of them. It's a shame too, Sephirotic is hot.

I am, it's true. My mom says so.

I guess the first person I "met" after having spoken via the internet wasn't really a meeting. I knew she lived in the general area, and then one day, and suddenly realized one day that she was in the same debate tournament as me.

I think she made the same connection. We avoided contact after that.

I've only ever met one person face-to-face that I'd previously only known online. I like to say we did that before it was trendy -- this was 20 years ago (eep!) on a local dial-up-BBS.

Great article rabbit -- you've done a wonderful job of describing that social awkwardness that I'm sure we've all felt from time to time.

Being an IRCer for the best part of a decade I've met up with, and regularly hung out with, a bunch of local people that I first met online, and in that time I've had relatively few surprises. It might be because of the immediacy of IRC, or the amount of time I'd spent chatting to them, but it'd be hard to keep up some kind of persona. There's always a chance that you just get the wrong impression of someone from text-only interaction, but that doesn't seem to happen often.

The one notable exception was a girl I met one night at a party. From our IRC interactions I thought she was a ditz, and she thought I was a douchebag. We've been together for 8 years today

buzzvang wrote:
cmitts wrote:

We actually ended up splitting into two pairs (my friend and I together) and heading in opposite directions across the Mediterranean Sea.

So when you met on the other side, did you engage in ritual combat to decide the fate of all civilization? Because that would've been great.

Wow, that would have been awesome, but I am afraid it was very low key. My friend and I are at the Christmas card level now living 2000 miles apart. As for the other two, I have not had the pleasure of seeing them again since we split on Crete. Good or bad 15 yearrs later, I can say that I have personally moved on.

Having now met another dozen of you at GenCon, I'm afraid I'm never leaving my basement again. Except to see Watchmen.

rabbit wrote:

Having now met another dozen of you at GenCon, I'm afraid I'm never leaving my basement again. Except to see Watchmen.

It went that well, huh?

My best story along these lines was back in 2001. I was big on posting on Slate's Fray, and I got into a huge debate about something with another poster. I was sitting in a big lab at the time with a dozen other people.

I had just posted a really good surrebuttal, and I hear this muffled swear word and a "Can you believe this asshole!" behind me. I turned around, and it turned out the guy I'd been arguing with was one of the SAP metadata guys. He not only did not know I was me, he didn't know I was a girl. We all had a good laugh over it at lunch and merrily continued to beat the argument into the ground for the rest of the afternoon and several times subsequently.

rabbit wrote:

Having now met another dozen of you at GenCon, I'm afraid I'm never leaving my basement again. Except to see Watchmen.

I also plan on never leaving Rabbit's basement.

wordsmythe wrote:

I also plan on never leaving Rabbit's basement.

You say that as if he'd let you.

wordsmythe wrote:

I also plan on never leaving Rabbit's basement.

Nice guy like you, never a misplaced comma.... I'm afraid you can't handle 'The Basement'.

cmitts wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

I also plan on never leaving Rabbit's basement.

Nice guy like you, never a misplaced comma.... I'm afraid you can't handle 'The Basement'.

It tightens up its subject-verb core, or else it gets the hose once more!

Admittedly I had great angst heading to the Triangle S&T, recently. But then I realized these people were all essentially like me: moderately introverted but easy to like with an almost insatiable appetite for human flesh. After that it was a blast.

ColdForged wrote:

Admittedly I had great angst heading to the Triangle S&T, recently. But then I realized these people were all essentially like me: moderately introverted but easy to like with an almost insatiable appetite for human flesh. After that it was a blast.

Those babies were so tender.