ABOUT COMMUNITY

Photo by Death to Stock. Edited with 'Old Love' Photoshop Action

Over the past year I’ve been lucky to “meet” a lot of people online. Some have become the best supporters, friends and/or clients. From outside our core interests (a lot are other designers or bloggers like myself), we share a lot of other interests (TV shows, love for Mexican food) and have introduced each other to new things along the way. This is great, as community on social media is supposed to do this. It’s one of the reasons why I personally love connecting online.

But I’ve seen the not so great side too. I’ve seen communities form and as they start to click with one central interest, they stray away or ignore others who aren’t quite like them. It makes me wonder why high school has been carried on throughout our lives. 

I’m not saying this to be mean. I’m not saying everyone is going to be friends with everyone else, because we’re not. Some people don’t gel and I completely understand that. But I’ve watched some people shut other people out, because they were “too this” or not “enough that.” 

From my understanding, people turn to social media because they feel some sort of isolation in their real life. They don’t feel like people they know at home really connect with them so they hope online and find others who get them. 

This is the beauty and scary thing about social media. Connection happens, but alienation happens too. 

I don’t know what to say really on how to solve it (except not alienating people). There are those people who don’t care. There are those who don’t know they’re doing it, and maybe this will be a wake-up call? I don’t know. Is it just me?

Until next time,

C