Meatspace is Mandatory
in-person friendships are not replaceable
This post is not paywalled, but I have a lot of content that is, including two ongoing series: “How to Not Suck at Math,” and another of creative writing. If you’d like a paid subscription but cannot afford one, email hollymathnerd at gmail dot com for a free year.
I had been talking to my therapist for awhile—at the time of this story, it had come up in nearly every session, for months—about focus, distraction, mindfulness, and how I experienced myself as being almost incapable of sustained deep thought or ever feeling like I had experienced, extended, or received any real connection. I attributed this to a consequence of being alone almost all the time, which was a bullshit excuse.
Mostly, it related to choices I’ve made, circumstances I’ve tolerated, priorities I’ve misplaced, and the insecurity that results in a lack of willingness to speak up and ask for what I need.
In a Saturday morning session, he challenged me on this “it’s all because I’m alone too much” narrative, as he challenges me on almost everything. (Which is, of course, his job.) He pointed out that I have several close friendships, people who love me, people who I could call if I were in real trouble and say, “I need you. I need you to get on a plane and come help me,” and they would do so, as I certainly would do for them.
So while I may be alone more often than I prefer, am I really as alone as I seem to think I am?
I countered that he really doesn’t understand a digital life, or how fragmenting and fake it can be, even when one isn’t trying to be fake—even when one is trying very hard to not be fake. (He is one of the very rare upper middle class people, in 2024, with the wisdom to be mostly offline.)
One Saturday night, my digital communications exploded for no particular reason, just an outlier night, during which I took notes.
Here’s an anonymized version of part of the notes.
A, B, C, D, E — referring to people I regard as part of my inner circle; these are the friends my therapist was referring to when he challenged my narrative of myself as alone in the world.
F, G, H, I, J — referring to people I regard as real friends, just not inner-circle friends.
K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W — people I know only online, to whom I have spoken anywhere from a few times to regularly, some of whom I’ve taught/tutored math to either them or their kids, people I am kindly disposed to beyond what we talk about, people I’d call “internet friends”.
X, Y, Z, AA, BB — two of these are creepy men who think they can seduce me over the internet; the rest are people I have given advice via email or otherwise talked to who think of me in various ways, but from my end are mostly parasocial acquaintances at best; I have no ill will or animosity towards them and certainly no desire to hurt them, but they’re not friends.
Part of The Notes
6:12pm to 6:15pm: all of the following happening at once.
A is returning my texts from earlier, I want to read and respond in real time. She’s one of my best friends, certainly my best female friend, talking to her is super important to me.
B is filling up our private Discord channel with things I legit want to talk to him about.
I have an appointment to watch Battlestar Galactica with D in less than twenty minutes (online; we watch at the same time and discuss it). I want to get all this other stuff done and dealt with so we can do that.
I responded to a text from E earlier, more short/quick than I wish I had, which she correctly recognized but incorrectly interpreted as my blowing her off, so now she’s (not unreasonably) wanting an explanation.
F is private messaging me on Discord. He is doing Code Wars and has a mathematical coding question that would improve my mood by 10,000% to ignore everything else and focus on with him.
Separately, G has re-read an old Substack post of mine and is asking for my help on a sensitive topic that deserves my full attention to respond to him.
I check my email and Discord message requests while this notification bonanza is happening, waiting on it to settle down so I can prioritize. Everyone from K to R is either emailing me or wanting to talk to me, some of which is just socializing but some of which is important and deserves my attention.
Z is now creeping me out to the point of filtering his emails straight to my Creepers file.
6:40pm: having delayed the Battlestar Galactica appointment to deal with the deluge, I’ve now:
apologized to E and tried to explain it’s not personal,
given B, who is extremely important to me and not doing great, my full attention in responding until he had to go,
told F when I will get back to him, and am now finishing up
responding to A in the depth warranted and desired.
7:20pm: before I start closing things and turning off notifications to watch BSG with D, I do a quick check to try to guess how much time I need after to catch up everything. Status as follows.
AA and BB have both decided that a recent Substack post (two separate ones) means I need them to try to parent me and sent long emails. I will ignore AA but BB is bordering on creepy so I have to carefully consider my response or lack of response.
Got a text from C saying that he may be able to call later. The chance to actually talk to a person, in real time, is so precious that I let D know it may happen and if so I’ll have to pause Battlestar Galactica. He understands and is fine with this.
S, T, U, V, and W have either messaged me on Discord, messaged me on Signal, texted, or emailed. Two of these were responding to messages I sent the day before; the rest were initiating new conversations.
I really miss B and want to hang out, but need to be very careful that expressing this isn’t intrusive or putting more pressure on him than he can take at the moment. It seems like a good time to mention it, but I need to think about it.
It will be C’s birthday soon, and instead of sending a card with his present, I decide to write a letter. The scattershot insanity of my life is ridiculous but I’m a good writer. I will include a letter to express my gratitude and love, and knowing I can do this, along with having chosen something he’ll really like, makes me feel better. I create the letter in my note-taking app, then go watch the movie.
Good Therapy Is A Mirror
I read all of my notes, not just the brief portion excerpted here, to my therapist.
I said, still looking at my notes: “This was an anomaly. This was a 10. But to be honest, my life idles at probably six and a half or seven. Eight on bad days. That’s mostly what I’ve meant all these times I’ve tried to explain that even with A, B, C, D, and E, who I absolutely know love me, that it’s really only phone calls, or real-time texting if A and I are going back and forth at the same time, that feel like connecting. The rest of it doesn’t really feel like connecting. At all.”
I looked up at him.
He stared at me.
I looked back.
He continued staring at me.
I looked at him until I couldn’t take it anymore.
Then I looked at my shoes until I felt dumb enough to make myself look at him again.
He was still staring at me.
I took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. I was just about to say, “Clearly I have to make some changes” when he finally spoke.
“Do you even see the insanity in this life you’ve created for yourself?”
I nodded, trying not to start crying. Something about the reality of the insanity was horrifying and inescapably real, now that he saw it clearly.
“How did you feel in the middle of this documented insanity?”
The truth was that I didn’t know. I wasn’t happy, certainly, though I thought I knew what would have pushed me in the direction of happiness. I said that.
“What would that have been?” he asked.
“Talking to C if he was able to call, making plans to see B, doing Code Wars math stuff with F, planning some time before bed to respond to A’s texts with actual attention and presence.”
“So you’re clear that giving your friends your attention—even digitally—one at a time is what you find fulfilling and meaningful, but you continue to lead this life of complete insanity and utter digital fragmentation?”
I nodded.
“When you’re talking to your actual friends, to A, B, C, D, or E — do they know how you’re feeling? What you’re doing? Do they have any sense of what’s actually going on in your life?”
“Well, I mostly talk to C on the phone, so yes, he usually does. And A is a writer, so talking to her my own writer-mode usually kicks in and I paint a good picture of where I am and what I’m doing, more often than not, I think. D is so goddamn smart I bet he’d guess right 99 times out of 100 even without my saying. E, it depends. With her, I usually summarize ‘bad’ as ‘busy,’ I think. Since I got my fancy car and I can dictate thoughtful texts while driving, I’m more forthcoming than I used to be with E, just because it’s easier. With B, usually, yes. I’m pretty careful at the moment since he’s not doing great, and I want to make sure I communicate that I’m fine in case he isn’t and I can be supportive. ”
He looked at me as if I had just announced that I had three heads.
“You’re fine, huh? You read me that account of an hour and a half of your life and then just say ‘Oh, I’m fine,’ as if you’d even know if you were, or were not, fine.”
It Used To Be WAAAAAAY Worse
I heard an Alcoholics Anonymous talk once, when a friend of mine was getting a five-year sobriety chip. The speaker was a guy who was only put into the psych ward once a year for his first three years of sobriety and thus regarded himself as a paragon of mental health, since when he was drinking he was in the psych ward far more often than that. I reminded myself of this guy when I tried to justify my digital life to my therapist (who did not let me get away with it), since the simple fact is that by getting off Twitter my digital life is infinitely less fragmented and complex than it used to be—and this is true despite the insanity described here.
For fun, I’ve put some screenshots at the bottom of this post from the comments on an old post wherein I tried to explain in more detail why I got off Twitter—some of you may enjoy and find it funny.
The Definition of Friendship
Contrastive focus reduplication is my favorite linguistic trick. This is when you repeat a word to indicate what meaning of the word you have in mind.
Examples:
“Is she still waiting tables, or has she found a job-job?”
“He likes you, but does he like-like you?”
Lately I’ve noticed myself using this with the word friend.
My inner circle, letters A, B, C, D, and E in the above, are my friend-friends.
G, H, I, J, and K are my friends.
Everyone else are my internet-friends at best…but what does that mean?
I think it means something like “a digital avatar for whom I’ve started the process of mentally re-casting them and re-organizing my brain to recognize that an extant person is behind the digital avatar—is a human.”
So what is a friend, or a friend-friend?
My friends are the people for whom I would sacrifice a lot.
My friend-friends are the people for whom I would sacrifice almost anything, would get on a plane, would bail them out in the middle of the night, would wire them whatever money I had, would be the only person on planet earth to support a decision if I knew they were doing what they thought was best for themselves.
Reciprocally, they’re the people with whom I’m willing to be open and fully honest, even when my authentic self is weak, incompetent, or otherwise pathetic. They’re the people I’m willing to trust not to abandon me in my times of need and to ask them to trust me enough to let me be there for them, in theirs.
All of this is doable remotely, but it’s far better, deeper, and more human in person.
And I’m convinced that it’s only partly doable remotely, and then only with an enormous investment of time, energy, and effort—most of which is just not something most people can or will invest.
Why Work is Different
I’ve had a grown-up job for just shy of three years, fully remote the whole time. And the longer this goes on, the more convinced I am that remote work is ideal.
Despite the Woke bullshit about “bringing your whole self to work,” nobody actually wants this.
Every single thing I’ve described about why remote contact as the sole/primary way people connect is bad for friendships—those very same things are why it is good for work. For work, what matters is results. Deliverables. Execution. Product. Nobody should give a rat’s ass about the feelings that went into it.
The fragmentation of a digital life, where only what one chooses to disclose is in fact disclosed — this is why I’m a star at my company.
If I’m having a bad PTSD day and have cried four times, nobody on my team, nobody who manages or supervises me, and none of my clients cares in the slightest. Nor should they. It shouldn’t matter at all to them, nor should they even be able to tell. And it doesn’t, and they can’t—because remote work means I can make it not matter.
This works the other way, too — remote work lets my job avoid my worst, but it also gets my best. I’ve had many good ideas in the middle of the night, on walks, or in the shower, and then gone right to my computer to start executing them. I can decide that the complicated, messy, not-work-related parts of my life and my being don’t matter and then make that be true, by managing my presentation and performance in the way that lets them get all the best and most professional aspects.
What Only Happens in Person With Friends
All of this is on my mind because I got a wonderful surprise this week. Yesterday, I got to hang out in person with someone I don’t get to see very often, someone I love very much. And it was glorious.
I am very skilled at communicating love at a distance. I remember birthdays, I send wonderful Christmas packages, I’m both comfortable and confident with “thinking of you” and “was just making a gratitude list and your face was near the top of my thoughts” texts, and I even enjoy sending letters on paper through the mail service. I am as good at it gets at that stuff.
And even for me, someone who is legit elite at this type of niche communication, someone who is emotionally literate, creative, and prioritizes her friendships in the way that only someone with no family possibly can prioritize friendships—even for me, none of it is even half as important, life-affirming, valuable, lasting, and real as being with someone in person.
All the Discord chats in the world do not replace looking into their eyes, noticing their body language, picking on subtle nuances. I believe that people love me and I believe that the people I love know that I love them, but I’m convinced of something: the three seconds of hugging someone extra-hard before letting go communicate that far more deeply, meaningfully, and profoundly than all of the above.
We are organic beings, flesh and blood creatures who live in meatspace, and there is nothing that can change this fact. Humans need each other. And we need each other in the flesh, in shared space and time, in presence that is shared in the moment.
No matter what it takes, no matter how fragmented and digital the world gets, I’m going to find a way to spend more time with my loved ones in person.
It matters.
It matters a lot.
It matters more, perhaps, than anything else.
Addendum: The Promised Screenshots
Announcement: Price Change
The price of a paid subscription is locked-in forever, for all current paid subscribers. But it will go up for new subscribers on the ides of March—March 15, 2024—to the current Substack average, $8/month or $72/yr (3 months free). So if you’ve been on the fence, now is the time to lock in. I’m trying to fund a very expensive September 2024—when I’ll be moving into a new, bigger apartment and getting a professionally trained hearing dog—without draining my savings account. 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
Reminder: if you are already a paid subscriber, your price will not change.
About My Substack: I’m a data scientist who would rather be a math teacher but, being unwilling to brainwash kids into Woke nonsense, am presently unqualified to teach in the US. So I bring my “math is fun and anyone can learn it” approach to mathematics here to Substack in my series, “How to Not Suck at Math,” (first five entries not paywalled, links at the top of part 5, here). Paid subscribers also have access to a creative writing series in which I post a variety of things, including fiction, descriptions, and other “writing experiments,” along with personal stories that don’t relate to Larger Points I Want To Make About The World.
My other posts are mostly cultural takes from a broadly anti-Woke perspective—yes, I’m one of those annoying classical liberals who would’ve been considered on the left until ten seconds ago. Lately I’ve regained a childhood love of reading and started publishing book reviews, including of the Wokest novel I’ve ever read and memoirs by Rob Henderson and Konstantin Kisin. My most widely useful essay may be this one, about how to resist the demon of self-termination.
I think that all of the apps and platforms and information avenues we're able to wander down do open up the possibilities for learning and interactions. I can encounter and integrate far more useful information on Twitter and watching brief YouTube videos that I can sitting down and reading books start-to-finish, for example.
However, that kind of multi-tasking isn't just not optimal for humans. It's actually antithetical to they way we usually operate in the world. There's no online equivalent to sitting down and reading for two hours, losing yourself in the flow state. Similarly, there's no online equivalent to the nuance and social cues and neurotransmitter release and pheromones and tactility of spending time with people, in person. I think this a lesson that most 'online' people are beginning to learn. I fear it's one that the young will require decades to learn... and by the their damage may be irreparable.
Thanks for this piece Holly.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/
Whoah! That makes me not want to comment. LOL
Seriously though, I have been trying to understand how I manage to get less and less done, the more attention and interaction I get online, so this is very timely for me.