Two Things
1) You can only fit so many women on a page in Zoom. But eventually you’ll figure out you can scroll through to see all the smiling faces crowded into the “room” for bible study.
2) It’s not the same. Oh yes, we are thankful for technology, but I think what is being revealed here is the truth some of us have always suspected. While we can feel somewhat connected, technology will never be an adequate substitute for actual human closeness and physical touch. Truth is, intimacy requires proximity.*
Even so, social media is being redeemed in my eyes lately by all the people authentically trying to reach out and connect in the only way available to us these days. It just all seems so much more...real. I love the fumbling. The blurry, shaky videos. I love the Instagram Lives that keep cutting out and the panicked expressions of my colleagues scrambling to turn off their video as they “join the meeting.” I love that more people are engaging with the socials purely out of legit love for their people. I even love that it has led me to repent over the way I have viewed this medium with proud disdain over the years.
What if the result of this crisis is a more authentic and facade free way of online living? (Except for the stellar Zoom backgrounds…let’s definitely keep those.) What if this leaves us with fewer carefully arranged stills and forced filters? Less posing and more capturing? What if we get so tired of gazing into our own webcams and it kills the selfie? What if somehow the global pandemic causes us all to stop spending so much time building our brands and we get back to actually building each other up?
If that’s social media on the other side of this…I’m so in.
*Not sure if Skye Jethani himself coined the phrase but his words, not mine.
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