Fotografo de Bodas, Santiago

May 29, 2011

Notice how I titled this post GIANT Internet Nerds, not just regular Internet Nerds.

I have so many friends in real life, that are from my online world. I maintain close relationships with people I’ve never even met. I’m currently en route (lies, I’m here now, but I wrote this on the plane to London!) to a different continent to go stay with a friend I consider to be like a soul sister — and we’ve only hung out a total of like 4 times before.

Andi’s wedding was basically the culmination of my internet nerdiness! Except the wedding was so beautiful and glamorous that it made me feel like significantly less of a geek.

After meeting for the first time last year, Andi and I instantly hit it off. When we talked, we skipped all the meaningless chit chat and went straight to the good stuff — relationships, difficulties of running a business, etc. Via countless emails, plus following each other’s blog posts, we already knew each other.

So when she announced that she was getting married in Buenos Aires, I was not shocked at all that people from around the travel blog community were invited. I was, however, shocked at the amount of people that went. There are few people in this world that know that many people willing to fly that far to attend their nuptials.

Some of the people who attended had never even met Andi in real life before! And many of us were also meeting each other for the first time. Of course, Emily went. I mean, she’d also only hung out with Andi for a few days that one time back in September of last year but after that short weekend together we had already formed a plan to kidnap Andi and force her to live in Chile forever, so it’s only natural that Emily would hop on a plane over the Andes for this girl she’d met once previously.

At the wedding, I couldn’t help but thinking, this is the future, whether people like it or not. I’ve heard so much talk about how face to face social interaction is replaced by social media online. But I don’t think of it that way. To me, social media interaction is like an added bonus in addition to face to face interaction. If it weren’t for these girls’ blogs, I would have went to that wedding knowing nothing about them. I would’ve met them there, chatted and had a great time with them…and then that would’ve been it. It’s not like I would’ve started a pen-pal relationship with someone I’d only met one time.

But because of social media — twitter interactions, facebook and following their blogs — by the time I got to the wedding, I already knew a little bit about all of them, so our conversations over the course of the evening went a little bit deeper. Afterward, the connection was maintained by adding them on facebook, if we weren’t already fb friends, and continuing to keep up with their lives via their social media feeds. Because of this, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if we all saw each other again somewhere in real life.

From left to right, the online travel mavens at the wedding: Julie, NuevaAmericana. Emily, Don’t Call Me Gringa. Andi, My Beautiful Adventures. Me, not a maven. Link is WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW. Kirsten, Kirsten Alana. Laura, Travel For Love. Abby, The Jungle Princess. Andrea, Inspiring Travelers.

Please forgive my disgusting hair. I asked the hairdresser if he could give me a spray to tame the frizz because Rodrigo hooks me up before all my weddings, and this guy put something on my head that made me greasy. Ew.

So yes, kids on facebook all of the time does pose a problem — if they truly never see each other face to face. But in a lot of cases, I think that social media genuinely helps people forge more connections — and if you use it right, they’re not just connections, they’re real connections.

Do you believe that social media is destroying our society?

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9 Comments

Love this post and love what you said about “us.” I’m glad that my internet friends and real-life friends were able to connect and are now friends. Some are even planning trips together, so awesome!!! Miss you babe!

Comment by Andi — May 30, 2011 @ 3:15 am

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I think we’re some pretty hot nerds, haha =) thanks so much for sharing the pic!

Comment by Andrea — May 30, 2011 @ 4:35 am

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Such a $64,000 question! Social media has been a game changer in forging friendships, getting communications out, building businesses & marketing. The changes cross many areas of life and I do genuinely believe these changes are for the better!

The programmer in me does have to wonder about Facebook though. It is basically just one big database. You have to wonder why somebody would create a database asking for a person’s name, birthdate, employment & education history, & what they are doing now. Talk about a goldmine of information! (I do admit to a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I do use it and have reconnected with many people because of it, even though I complain about it.)

Finally, it’s not the amount of time you spend on social media. It’s how you use it. My younger cousins go into great detail of their weekend festivities on Facebook. These are things I believe they would not want their parents, aunts and uncles to know about. Family holidays get very interesting when my aunts start discussing what their younger nieces and nephews have been doing on Saturday nights. Big fights on “Who snitched?” ensue. However, my cousins fail to realize that the aunts get this information from Facebook. So, have fun with Facebook and other social media, just be careful and don’t post anything you don’t want discussed during Christmas dinner.

Comment by Michelle — May 30, 2011 @ 5:35 am

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I think too much social media can be quite a dangerous thing in regards to spending too much time in front of a screen and never developing you ability to speak to people face to face. But, saying that, there are things I write on my blog that I can’t bring myself to speak to people in the ‘real’ world about and sometimes I even find myself telling my ‘online’ friends things I’ve never told people before. It’s incredible how close you can feel to people you’ve never met but already know so much about from their personal writing.

Comment by Ceri — May 30, 2011 @ 6:23 am

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You are a maven, silly! I of course love this post and very much agree with your take on social media. One thing that Abby, Andrea and I talked about at the wedding is how the internet allows us to create friendships based on mutual interests. Of course you can do that IRL too, but on the internet there’s no “oh, I have nothing in common with her anymore, but we’ve been friends since we were 5″ or “I don’t really like him, but he’s in my group of friends, so we see each other all the time.” That’s not to say those real-life interactions are bad – I have some in my life, and I still value them for what they are. But it’s also pretty cool to be able to read someone’s blog or tweets and based on that pursue relationships only with people who make you really excited because you share a passion like travel or living abroad or fly fishing (hey, whatever floats your boat!).

Comment by Emily — May 30, 2011 @ 6:49 am

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I love that you wrote this! I was just thrilled that serendipity made it that I got to meet Andi ONCE before I attended her wedding! That was dumb luck that we happened to be in Florida at the same time a few weeks before her “I dos.” And yes, some people thought that was a little weird… I had a blast and would love, love, love to see you again! Yes, Emily, we were in total agreement. I love how you expressed that. When I was living as an expat, my online community was my life-line at times, answering questions about everything from visa issues to “uh, there’s a scorpion in my bed, help.” Now that I’m back, it’s how I stay connected to my fellow travel junkies. And hey, since I’m single, I end up taking a lot of my trips with my online friends — that’s awesome!

Comment by Abby — May 30, 2011 @ 8:27 am

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This is a really interesting post. My main reactions were, I think everything you’ve said seems valid and really cool — and I can’t imagine being that way myself. Your blog is the only one I read, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I get on twitter. Not because I think social media is bad… I guess it’s just my personality. I’m an introvert and a homebody, and even though I dink around online some I definitely need to recharge by being alone and unconnected. So I don’t know. It’s all pretty murky territory for me. Certain devices like the iPad wig me out, because they seem to suggest that you should be connected all the time, and I do think that everybody, to some degree, has a fundamental, maybe biological need to unplug. And the proliferation of devices and networks makes it harder and harder to do that.

In the end, I agree with what you’re saying (and I wish we could chat about it in person!), that it is the future (and the present), whether we like it or not. And that if used well it can be awesome. But it’s new enough and nuanced enough that it’s hard to fully understand what the specific dangers (and the possibilities) might look like. Which is getting a lot broader than what you’re actually talking about, so let me circle back around and say: cool post!

Comment by Carrie — May 30, 2011 @ 9:48 am

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Internet expands the probability of finding someone who really shares your interests and thoughts, since you can get in contact with a lot more people than in just real life (at work, studies, neighborhood, or family). I met my girlfriend this way, and I´m happy about it. I think it´s great that you all could also meet in person in such a special occasion.

Comment by Marmo — May 30, 2011 @ 4:35 pm

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I dont think the social media replaces “real” friendships. i think that it allows us to really know other people for who they really are not pretending to be someone else. It is hard to walk up to someone and introduce yourself. Plus we judge people so hard on the way the look and talk that I think in the internet we don’t have those problems. I met andi and you on the web and i think that you 2 know me better than a lot of people around me. i am a complete nerd and it is easy to talk to others that share the same interests w/o the small talk that i hate so much! plus i love your blog and pics it is easy to stay in touch using FB, never forget bdays, and uploading pictures to share w other. I love it. I wish that we had this in 99 when i moved here and would have made friends a lot quicker than i did.

Comment by Catalina — May 30, 2011 @ 7:06 pm

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