No Responses

Electronic communications, email and social media in particular, have greatly expanded our interactions.  Presidents and Rock Stars have always gotten fan mail, perhaps even hired people to keep score on how much and what it said.  And talk radio from its earliest days have people in the audience who take it upon themselves to call in.  Now we have likes and comments.  Anybody can place either or receive either without having to be a celebrity first.  In its place we have created Influencers, people whose blogs take off or whose YouTubes of their pets capture the fancy of an immense audience.  And we have electronic communications in its corporate form.  Every corporation with a website includes a Contact Us option.

But for all the enhancements in the ability to connect, Loneliness has become more prevalent.  We want a response, but don't always get one.  My inquiry to consumer purchases gone bad mostly do not get a reply from Customer Service.  Overcharged for parking, minichopper part warped in dishwasher, camera purchase online not what I anticipated getting.  All ignored, or maybe tabulated into internal company statistics.  

Twitter, maybe one notification a day, though for good reasons I don't always open it.  Yet that is the most popular, though superficial, feedback forum in the world.  Among FB where I choose my preferred contacts, something relatively routine like a birthday greeting will get dozens of responses while experiences or ideas that are profound get none.  And Like becomes a surrogate for response, no thought involved, no exchange involved.

My Blog had a little boomlet of views last week, thirty or so a day for several days.  No comments, just views.  I don't know why.  

Maybe we are all inundated with contacts. Responses may be taking the form of lottery or other game of chance.  It might happen, and for some Twitter presences it will happen, but only in one direction.  It's not really an exchange.  The people who have hundreds of followers accumulate them by doing other things more vital than Tweeting.  They rarely tweet back.

My professor once described type 1 diabetes as starvation amid plenty.  That's where our electronic interactions seem to be headed.