Chat Screen Cafe - (Week 2)

As I type this journal on my laptop, I know that the final product will be shaped by that very action. I know that I will not type this out whole, start to finish, I will check Facebook, just to check it, to ensure that my constructed identity, my calling card, is tip-top or to see if someone has communicated with me, "look a wall post."It's seems like the communication has become more of an ego-boosting, points-accumulating game, rather than an attempt at actual connection, "Hmmm with this CRAZY status update maybe I'll get 17 "Likes" and even more comments!" And after I check Facebook I will return to this writing with something else in mind. I have a friend doing a semester in Oslo, we Skype ever so often, I enjoy it. Like any conversation, it takes a while to warm up. We start by talking at each other, then comforts grows, then there is a period of intense engagement where you feel like you're actually in the room with the person, you have surpassed the mediation of the screen, you are outside the mind in asocially reactive and impulsive state. Then something from the real world interrupts the flow, and you are brought out of it. In a darker head space, doubt rampant, paranoia setting in, I look back at these conversations with a measured anxiety. I have not seen this person for, 2 months say, yet I feel like I was just with them, but then again, my only bearing on this person's existence is through their digital representation on a screen. How do I know that it's real? How do I know something out in cyberspace isn't creating this avatar for me to interact with? That last one is getting a bit too paranoid, it's hard to imitate a person's idiosyncrasies and to be able to recall those experiences had together alone. Anyway, I guess its hyper-real, it appears real and so why bother questioning whether not it is if it gets you off anyway. Long story short, Skype don't beat sitting across from one another at a cafe.