Friendships 1.0 and otherwise

In a relatively recent study conducted by Crowd Science about 36% of respondents said they prefer to keep in touch with friends through social media than by phone. On the bright side, about 8 in 10 people prefer face-to-face contact, although there are 10% of weirdos who actually prefer online media.

I have to admit I am one of those people who use online tools—be it email, or social media sites—much more than the phone, even though I send a lot of text messages. Someone I know recently said to me that text messages are the postcards of today—what a romantic way to look at it (for the record, I am also one of possibly no more than 10 people on the planet who sends real, paper postcards every now and then). Phone conversations don’t do it for me, being a poor relation to real face-to-face contact; yes, you hear the voice, but there is no time to relax and talk about things that matter, it always stays on the surface unless you have hours to spare. I really much prefer to sit down and write a long and thoughtful email.

Or, for that matter, a blog post. Because, this is how it all started for us, way back when Andrej was a baby and we had little time on our hands but wanted to keep friends updated. So we figure a blog would do the trick. We quickly realized, though, that we have no inspiration for recording our everyday lives, and why should we? I personally don’t care about what my friends are doing every minute of their waking lives; what I want to know instead is what they are thinking, what inspires them, what are the things they feel passionate about.

This is why this blog evolved very quickly from a diary into something where we share a bit of our inner lives. It’s not a substitute for real-life exchanges of thoughts, or what a friend of mine calls “relationships 1.0,” and it is not meant to substitute 1-on-1 communication, either. But it makes me really happy when friends—particularly those whom I see only a few times a year, or I don’t see at all-- tell me that they read something I wrote and it resonated with them, or they thought it was interesting, or it made them think.

Ideally, we would be sharing our thoughts over a glass of wine and a leisurely dinner that would extend well into the night, and possibly until dawn. That’s relationships 1.0 at their best, but in between those (alas, too rare) encounters, we have to substitute somehow—enter relationships 2.0. We are simply sharing animals like that…