Alone Together (42 page)
Authors: Sherry Turkle
In Adam’s story we see the comfort of retreat that Schüll describes, where one feels a sense of adventure in a zone of predictable action. Simulation offers the warmth of a technological cocoon. And once we feel humane because we are good friends to bots, perhaps it is not so surprising that we confide in online strangers, even about the most personal matters. On confessional sites our expectations of each other are reduced, but people are warmed by their electronic hearth. Just as simulation makes it possible to do things you can’t accomplish in the real—become a guitar virtuoso or live like a benevolent prince—online confession gives you permission
not
to do things you
should
do in the real, like apologize and make amends.
not
to do things you
should
do in the real, like apologize and make amends.
CHAPTER 12
True confessions
I
regularly read online confessional sites for six months. One afternoon of reading brings me to “The only reason I haven’t killed myself yet is because my mother would kill herself.... I’m in love with a boy I’ve never met but we IM each other every day and talk about what we’ll do or where we’ll live when we’re married.... My bulimia has made me better at giving blowjobs.”
regularly read online confessional sites for six months. One afternoon of reading brings me to “The only reason I haven’t killed myself yet is because my mother would kill herself.... I’m in love with a boy I’ve never met but we IM each other every day and talk about what we’ll do or where we’ll live when we’re married.... My bulimia has made me better at giving blowjobs.”
On most confessional sites, people log on anonymously and post a confession, sometimes referred to as a secret. On some sites, the transaction ends there. On most, the world is asked to respond. The world may be kind or ignore you. Or the world may be harsh. On PostSecret, a site where confessions are sent as illustrated postcards before being scanned and put on the site, a woman creates an image depicting a reed-thin model and writes, “If, in order to look like this, I would have to have my foot amputated . . . I would cut it off in a second.”
1
A year later I come back to the PostSecret site and its troubled minds: “My mother had an affair with the first boy I slept with.” “Divorcing you was a mistake.” “I used to be dependent on him. Now I’m dependent on the drugs he sold me when we broke up.”
1
A year later I come back to the PostSecret site and its troubled minds: “My mother had an affair with the first boy I slept with.” “Divorcing you was a mistake.” “I used to be dependent on him. Now I’m dependent on the drugs he sold me when we broke up.”
On PostSecret there are exchanges between postcard writers and those who respond to them with an e-mail. The message “I wonder if white people know how lucky they are to be white” evokes “I wonder if straight people know how lucky they are to be straight” and “I wonder if any white/non-white, straight/not straight people know how lucky they are not to be autistic.” The postcard that says, “I am having neck surgery tomorrow and I hope I die,” brings forth “I hope that feeling dies and your surgery gives you another reason to live. You’re in my prayers.”
2
2
These writers hold a mirror up to our complex times. There are important things to learn or be reminded of: Relationships we complain about nevertheless keep us connected to life. Advertising exerts a deadly tyranny. People reach out to strangers in kindness. Loneliness is so great that marriage to someone we have only met on a website can seem our best hope. On the electronic frontier, we forge connections that bring us back to earlier times and earlier technologies. We fall in love with twenty-first-century pen pals. Often their appeal is that we don’t know who they “really” are. So they might be perfect.
In the world of PostSecret, the ability to be tentative, to speak in half-thoughts, gives permission to speak. Nancy, twenty-two, sends cards to PostSecret nearly once a month.
3
She says, “I don’t have enough discipline to keep a diary. I don’t think I’m important enough to do that. But I’m able to send my postcard.” For a postcard, her simplest formulation is formulation enough. It is nice to think that the cards could be her start toward feeling worthy of more.
3
She says, “I don’t have enough discipline to keep a diary. I don’t think I’m important enough to do that. But I’m able to send my postcard.” For a postcard, her simplest formulation is formulation enough. It is nice to think that the cards could be her start toward feeling worthy of more.
That the Internet is a place to simplify and heighten experience is very much on my mind as I read confessional sites. Market incentives are, after all, at work; each story competes with others. Exaggeration might increase readership. And since all confessions are anonymous, who will ever know? But if people are not truthful here, these confessions are fiction. Or perhaps, online confessions are a new genre altogether. When people create avatars, they are not themselves but express important truths about themselves. Online confession, another Internet performance zone, also occupies an intermediate space. Here, statements may not be true, but true enough for writers to feel unburdened and for readers to feel part of a community.
PostSecret holds annual picnics at which people can meet each other and see the actual paper postcards that were mailed to the site. At the first picnic, a young man explains how the site consoles him. He clearly means to say that it “offers the assumption of acceptance.” But he makes a slip and says that the site “offers the pretense of acceptance.” Both are true. His slip captures the site for me. Sometimes acceptance is there. Sometimes it is not. But it all works as a new fantasy—someone is listening.
Some people dash off their postcards, but others use the making of the postcard as an opportunity to take stock. Crafting a postcard demands a pause. That pause is PostSecret’s great strength. Louisa, thirty-two, a mother of two, says, “You know what’s on your mind, but here, you get to see what is
most
on your mind.” On other sites, posting seems more impulsive. But on all of them, a confession that once might have been made within the bounds of friendship, family, or church now takes place with no bounds or bonds at all. It goes out to whoever is on the site. When confessions happen in real physical space, there is talk and negotiation.
most
on your mind.” On other sites, posting seems more impulsive. But on all of them, a confession that once might have been made within the bounds of friendship, family, or church now takes place with no bounds or bonds at all. It goes out to whoever is on the site. When confessions happen in real physical space, there is talk and negotiation.
Confessing to a friend might bring disapproval. But disapproval, while hard to take, can be part of an ongoing and sustaining relationship. It can mean that someone cares enough to consider your actions and talk to you about their feelings. And if a face-to-face confession meets criticism, we have some basis for evaluating its source. None of this happens in an online confession to strangers. One says one’s piece, and the opinions of others come as a barrage of anonymous reactions. It is hard, say those who post, to pay attention only to the kind ones.
VENTINGWhen I talk to people about online confession, I hear many of the same comments that come up during conversations about robot companionship: “It can do no harm.” “People are lonely. This gives them someplace to turn.” “It helps get things off your chest.” On the face of it, there are crucial differences between talking to human readers on a confessional site and to a machine that can have no idea of what a confession is. That the two contexts provoke similar reactions points to their similarities. Confessing to a website and talking to a robot deemed “therapeutic” both emphasize getting something “out.” Each act makes the same claim: bad feelings become less toxic when released. Each takes as its premise the notion that you can deal with feelings without dealing directly with a person.
4
In each, something that is less than conversation begins to seem like conversation. Venting feelings comes to feel like sharing them.
4
In each, something that is less than conversation begins to seem like conversation. Venting feelings comes to feel like sharing them.
There is a danger that we will come to see this reduction in our expectations as a new norm. There is the possibility that chatting with anonymous humans can make online bots and agents look like good company. And there is the possibility that the company of online bots makes anonymous humans look good. We ask less of people and more of technology.
Older people—say over thirty-five—talk about online confession as a substitute for things they want and don’t have (like a trusted pastor or friend). Younger people are more likely to take online confession on its own terms. It’s new; it’s interesting. Some read confessional sites simply to see what’s there. Some say they take comfort in learning that others have the same troubles that they do. Some say they do it for fun. And, of course, some use the sites for their own confessions, describing them with no intended irony, as a way to speak in private. Most Internet sites keep track of who has visited them. Online confessional sites make a point of saying that they do not. Sixteen-year-old Darren says, “Confession sites offer anonymity if you just want to get a secret out there.”
Darren’s family is from Vietnam. They are Catholic, very strict and religious. His father checks his homework every night and personally supervises extra lessons if he sees things slipping. His parents make his significant decisions for him, using what he calls their “rational rule.” He says they will choose his college by “measuring its cost relative to what different options will mean for my future career.” Darren adds with some edge to his voice, “I will be surprised if the ‘rational’ choice for my career is not engineering.” In all of this, Darren acquiesces. He does not express displeasure with his family culture, but he has looked for a place outside its bounds where “I can just shout my own feelings.”
Several of Darren’s Vietnamese friends use confessional sites; that is where he learned about them. Darren explains that when he and his friends confess, they all make up false screen names. He says, “We put our secrets up, and we just want to show it to a stranger, not a friend but a stranger. You want to express your emotion. You write it down and write it on the website and you just want a stranger who doesn’t know you to look at it. Not your friends.” Darren also thinks that a robotic confidant sounds like a good idea. That the robot would lack emotion does not bother him at all. In fact, he sees its lack of emotion as potentially “a good thing.” Unlike his family, the robot would be “nonjudgmental.” Darren’s reaction to the idea of talking to a computer program: “I could get out some pure feelings.”
In Darren’s community, he has no place to take what he calls his “irrational positions.” He says that it would be shaming to share them, even with his friends. This is where a future robot would be helpful and the Internet is helpful now. I never find out what Darren’s “irrational positions” are, but Sheryl, thirty-two, a nurse in western Massachusetts, is willing to say what she has shared online. There have been “inappropriate” romantic encounters with coworkers and she has taken two vacations with some of the money set aside for her parents’ retirement. She says that regarding both situations—the money and the men—online confession was a solace: “The most important thing is that after you make your confession, you read the others. You know you are not alone. A lot of other people have done almost the same things you did.”
Sheryl’s online confessions do not lead her to talk to those she has wronged or to try to make amends. She goes online to feel better, not to make things right. She thinks that most people use confessional sites this way. She says, “Many posts begin with ‘I could never tell my husband, but . . . I could never tell my mother, but . . . ” I ask her if online confession makes it easier
not
to apologize. Her answer is immediate: “Oh, I definitely think so. This is my way to make my peace ... and move on.” I am taken aback because I did not expect such a ready response. But Sheryl has already given this thought. She refers to the Twelve Steps, a program to combat addiction. She explains steps eight and nine: “Step eight says to make a ‘list of all persons we had harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.’ Step nine says to make ‘direct amends to such people.’” Sheryl then points out that step nine exempts you from taking these actions if amends “would injure those or others.” Sheryl is going with the exemption. She is ready to confess, not apologize.
not
to apologize. Her answer is immediate: “Oh, I definitely think so. This is my way to make my peace ... and move on.” I am taken aback because I did not expect such a ready response. But Sheryl has already given this thought. She refers to the Twelve Steps, a program to combat addiction. She explains steps eight and nine: “Step eight says to make a ‘list of all persons we had harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all.’ Step nine says to make ‘direct amends to such people.’” Sheryl then points out that step nine exempts you from taking these actions if amends “would injure those or others.” Sheryl is going with the exemption. She is ready to confess, not apologize.
The distinction between confession and apology comes up regularly in conversations about online communication and social-networking sites. There is a lot of apologizing on Facebook, for example, but I am often told that these apologies don’t count. They are more like confessions because a real apology has to deal more directly with the person you have wronged. Maria, the thirty-three-year-old financial analyst who said that the intensity of Second Life could be exhausting, does not like it when people try “to make things right” by e-mail. She thinks apologies must be made in person. “But,” she continues, “people don’t do that any more.... When people confess on the computer, they think they have done their job and now it is up to others to respond. But I think if you have hurt me, why should it be my job to come tell you that it is all right?” Recall sixteen-year-old Audrey’s derisive account of an online apology: “It’s cheap. It’s easy. All you have to do is type ‘I’m sorry.’” That pretty much describes how eighteen-year-old Larry handles things: “I don’t apologize to people any more. I just put my excuses on as my status [referring to Facebook]. The people who are affected know who I mean.” Sydney, twenty-three, a first-year law student, takes exception: “Saying you are sorry as your status . . . that is not an apology. That is saying ‘I’m sorry’ to Facebook.”
The elements of an apology are meant to lay the psychological groundwork for healing—and this means healing both for the person who has been offended and for the person who has offended. First, you have to know you have offended, you have to acknowledge the offense to the injured party, and you have to ask what you can do to make things right.
Technology makes it easy to blur the line between confession and apology, easy to lose sight of what an apology is, not only because online spaces offer themselves as “cheap” alternatives to confronting other people but because we may come to the challenge of an apology already feeling disconnected from other people. In that state, we forget that what we do affects others.
Young people, bruised by online skirmishes, can be the most articulate about looking back to the best practices of the past in the pursuit of a classic apology. Two sophomore girls at Silver Academy make the point that there is too much online apology going around. For one, “Texting an apology is really impersonal. You can’t hear their voice. They could be sarcastic, and you wouldn’t know.” The other agrees: “It’s harder to say ‘Sorry’ than text it, and if you’re the one receiving the apology, you know it’s hard for the person to say ‘Sorry.’ But that is what helps you forgive the person—that they’re saying it in person, that they actually have the guts to actually want to apologize.” In essence, both young women are saying that forgiveness follows from the experience of empathy. You see someone is unhappy for having hurt you. You feel sure that you are standing together with them. When we live a large part of our personal lives online, these complex empathetic transactions become more elusive. We get used to getting less.
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