Belonging Part 3.5: Online vs. F2F (IRL) Belonging

I just realized that I never got to a couple of questions I said I’d answer in Part 2 of this series – How do we experience digital belonging vs. F2F (Face-to-face) or IRL (in real life) belonging? And how do we prioritize one over the other?

And considering the Brené Brown podcast I heard late last week and cannot stop thinking about…

…where Brené calls online “belonging” – not when you know someone IRL or genuinely connect but when you have a 1000 “friends” you’ve never met or connected with outside of the social media platform – counterfeit connection and Esther Perel calls it artificial intimacy, I am integrating grief into this conversation too (hence why this part is numbered 3.5, not 2.5).

Oi.

Ok – let’s unpack this for a second because I have spent a lot of time online making both genuine and counterfeit connections. And the genuine connections are not just with folks I’ve met IRL. And the counterfeit connections are not just with folks I’ve met online. So, this isn’t as easy of a distinction as one might think it is. Here’s how Esther Perel talks about artificial intimacy in the podcast:

Artificial intimacy is all the experiences that we currently have that are pseudo experiences. They should give us the feeling of something real, but they don’t. I am talking to you about something deeply personal, and you’re answering me, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” … And I should be feeling connected, open, vulnerable, but in fact, you’re there, but you’re not present.

Esther Perel from “Esther Perel on New AI – Artificial Intimacy” Episode on Unlocking Us with Brené Brown

So, the important aspect here is presence. Genuine emotional connection. Being willing to really listen and attend to needs. But also being able to discuss through the hard stuff with vulnerability.

Sounds like…we’re talking about…belonging.

Go figure. This fundamental human need stuff seems to pop up everywhere. >;p

*Not belonging* in these contexts results in ambiguous loss, which is often associated with Alzheimer’s patients. The person is there, but they cognitively aren’t. Or they emotionally aren’t. Or they aren’t physically there but emotionally they are. In fact, ambiguous loss can be associated with loss of cognitive, emotional, or physical connection. The point is that there is never closure. And there’s real loneliness for the person who is present.

I wonder what ambiguous loss would look like through the lenses of PsyCap – hope, efficacy, resiliency, and optimism. Would the lenses help frame the feelings of loss in more concrete ways, allowing for closure? Or would the lenses widen the perceptions of ambiguity, resulting in less closure?

And how would the lenses affect the perceptions of belonging online? Would they clarify the counterfeit connections vs. the genuine ones? Or could we use the lenses to differentiate artificial vs. genuine intimacy in any modality?

These are definitely questions to consider and answer, perhaps at a later date. Yet, no matter how we visualize online vs. face-to-face belonging, it sounds like cultivating meaningful relationships takes a lot of work, intention, and boundaries.