The Game

Companionship. It is one of the fundamental values as humans that we seek suitable and reasonable companions to spend our days with. In such a large world it can prove difficult to even find someone to spend one day with let alone a lifetime. How many times can a fella strike out? Online communication gives the game a whole new playing field, with an infinite amount of unwritten rules and subjective land mines that can sink you further down the social ladder faster than it took you to creepily like that pic of her from a year ago.

Oddly enough, I played into this game. The tools were all there. I could talk one on one with a girl, hopefully keeping her in a comfortable and non-creeped state, in order to find out more about her. Aim and then Facebook chat made my school nights full of moments where I would sneak away to the family computer in order to see who was online. I realize that the game is two sided. I knew very full well that the females my age were employing probing tactics of their own. There existed dynamics to this game that nobody spelled out, they weren’t written in concrete. These rules and regulations however in-explicit could inevitably lead one to committing social suicide.

Learning the social implication of online communication is a process that never stops and can dictate a steep learning curve. One has to be plugged into many current trends or else they may fail to understand a critical part of a conversation through the use of a pun or acronym. Along my learning journey, I had my peers and, of course, the internet to turn to. Yet still, the scrutiny found me. I found myself embarrassed time and time again except that there were often no immediate consequences.

Punishment would come the next day. You never knew what was coming. God forbid that someone found out that I liked this girl! Sometimes the moments of silence alone were more painful than the sections of my day occupied with chatter. This social awkwardness has become a phenomenon that I realize everyone goes through. During the time, I believed that I was subject to a kind of awkwardness that was my fault, but really it was part of being that age.

There is such an awkwardness to middle school already and compounded with the social charges given off by social media, it is a powder keg that is ripe for disaster.

http://huff.to/1kLce9F – Tweens tweet about awkward middle school years.