Boundaries

The bee-hive mentality which has arisen due to social networking sites has its benefits and drawbacks. For the socially adept, the Facebook phenomenon can enhance an already vibrant social fabric: An actual social life, in other words. However, for the socially and geographically isolated, the social network sites can deepen isolation in three-dimensional terms. The illusion of a social life is not an actual social life.

There is no touch on Facebook; there is only "in touch". There is no kiss, no held hand, no reassuring shoulder rub. Facebook is a construction of pixels on a screen, wired to keyboards and mice. Nothing more.

I recently had several very unpleasant encounters in branches of a major banking institution. I found I was dealing with highly educated and abysmally inept customer service personnel. They were treating me like one of their Facebook friends, I assume. Unable to make the distinction between their roles as employees of a bank and Facebook friends or friend-of-friends, they addressed me in an insulting and personally intrusive manner.

One bank manager, a woman of obviously unhappy disposition, held a bank check containing my funds tightly to her pregnant abdomen as she interrogated me as to how I planned to spend my own money. She was stunned when I told her it was none of her business and advised her to hand me my funds immediately. She did so reluctantly with a look of consternation, like some short-circuited zombie.

Working in the virtual and working in the actual are different. In the virtual, electronic switches allow you to play god with your virtual reality. In the actual, the virtual attitude is called narcissism. It is high time that those of us who are able to discern these less-than-subtle distinctions practice active education of those who are unable to do so. Apparently, their parents did not do a very good job of it.