The Illusion of Intimacy

 

By Sam Watermeier 

The Internet claims to connect people. In that regard, it succeeds, but only in a superficial sense. The sense of intimacy that comes with the connection is an illusion, a simulation. That artificial nature becomes painfully clear when you turn to cyberspace for someone to be more than a friend.

“People want to go back to the day where you're sitting at a coffee shop, make eye contact and there is this mysterious moment where you don't know each other,” said dating coach and author Adam LaDolce in a recent CNN article.

Social media has made this sometimes anxiety-inducing way of meeting someone all too easy to avoid. It hypnotizes us all with an illusion of intimacy and communication, leading even typically extroverted people to hide behind their computer screens, thinking that an online conversation is the same as a face to face one. At the end of the day, Facebook and sites like it are, as body language expert Blake Eastman said, “groups of people that are highly connected online but socially isolated.”

“We feel that we don’t need to look people in the eyes to communicate anymore — a keystroke has replaced that look,” Eastman said. “But at the end of the day, we’re designed for human contact, not a computer screen.”

Face-to-face communication isn’t as easy as online contact, and that’s why it should feel more rewarding. Doesn’t the completion of a challenge feel more satisfying than that of a simple task? As writers Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris explain in Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me), “When people go through a great deal of pain, discomfort, effort, or embarrassment to get something, they will be happier with that ‘something’ than if it came to them easily.” That doesn’t seem to be the case now. These days, God forbid we experience some emotion when we talk to people. God forbid our palms get sweaty. God forbid our voices shake. We hide online to avoid those situations.

While online communication can certainly serve as a confidence booster or a catalyst for face-to-face contact, it should not function as a substitute. It's not a bad place to initiate a relationship, but dependence on it leads down a lonely road, especially when you realize that online chatting is essentially the equivalent of a long distance relationship. 

My advice? Don’t stay online to find a special someone. Sure, Match.com and sites like it have produced a few success stories. But look what happened to Manti Teo or the star of “Catfish.” Plus, online communication is not the real deal. It’s a simulation of it, nothing more. Use it sparingly. Look someone in the eye and strike up a conversation. Get off the Internet right…now.

Famed and Flawed

By Sam Watermeier

Why would someone release a tape of an actor getting angry on a film set? Or wait outside the grocery store to snap a shot of a model without makeup?

People do this to give us what we all desire and thus what sells — the notion that celebrities are flawed, just like the rest of us. However, we often contradict that desire by looking down upon them rather than saluting them when they show raw humanity.

There are very few cases in which a celebrity’s publicized blemishes worked to his or her advantage. When actor Mel Gibson’s angry phone calls to his ex-girlfriend were released in 2011, his demons added weight to his performance in “The Beaver,” in which he played a man suffering from similar inner turmoil. And when Hollywood badboy Mickey Rourke became a respectable actor again with “The Wrestler,” his off-screen comeback story brought attraction to the film’s similar tale of restoration and redemption.

The recent revelation of Lance Armstrong’s wrongdoings was less beneficial. When the former professional cyclist confessed to the ultimate confessor — Oprah Winfrey — the world wagged its finger at him for doping.

“I’m a flawed character,” Armstrong admitted to Oprah. The fact that he used the word “character” instead of “person” is telling. It suggests that Armstrong exists in a separate reality, that he is a two-dimensional figure in the media rather than a flesh-and-blood human in the world outside it.

Unlike the case with Gibson and Rourke, the exposure of Armstrong’s flawed humanity seemed to strip him of public worship. When his private actions were projected onto the public screen, his iconic veneer began to crack.

It’s time to straighten out our expectations of celebrities. Do they not qualify as celebrities if they display behavior on our level? Do we want them to be humans or gods?

We seem to want to relate to them yet we shake our heads in disgrace when they slip up or blow a gasket. Just listen to Christian Bale’s freak-out tape again. He doesn’t say anything that a “normal” person wouldn’t say in a fit of anger. All in all, it’s a pretty normal, relatable display of frustration yet the media and its consumers treated it like a shameful spectacle.

Perhaps the perceived crime of a spectacle like this is that it breaks the illusion all celebrities are expected to create — the illusion that they are not mere mortals but larger than life. Is there room for less iconic portraits of them amidst the media’s sensationalist spectacles?

My hope is that someday we will learn that being half human makes you stronger than a god. And to answer your question, yes, that is a quote from “Wrath of the Titans.”