Antisocial and Ready to Mingle

“Branch out!”

“Make friends!”

“Leave your comfort zone!”

As a freshman, I’ve heard these cliches alarmingly frequently over the past weeks. Through all of the orientations and meetings, these ideas were stressed the most. Essentially, if something scares you, do it.

After receiving this advice for the millionth time, I chuckled at the irony of “The Flight from Conversation.” Chapter 2 describes the havoc technology is wreaking on our social skills, encumbering how “connectedness” has changed our idea of civic duty.

I connected Chapter 2 with my life in the elevator. Only in an elevator is it acceptable to ignore the stranger next to you because...you’re locked in a metal box and could plunge to your deaths together. So, why not ask their name?

No, instead, I’m texting my mom about the care package she’s sending me tomorrow.

I stopped using my phone in the elevator after an incident in which, after a silent descent, a guy said “Have a good day,” out of the blue. I never saw his face, too absorbed in my mother’s concerned and garbled texts, and didn’t say “You too,” because I was shocked that someone spoke to me in the elevator.

Chapter 2 interested me because of how it presented the paradox of technological connectedness and related it back to civic behavior. Instead of describing teenagers as lemmings, it simply addressed our natural instinct to be social, the fear of rejection that inhibits intermingling, and how technology satisfies these conflicting inclinations.

Since this reading, I’ve become painfully aware of how inexperienced I am at chitchatting. Before The Flight from Conversation, I was scared of the “moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent” (RCL, page 17). I thought that people thought I was simple when social awkwardness reared its ugly head, but this chapter made me realize how integral it is to making friends. I realized that our civic duty was once ‘putting ourselves out there,’ and that taking a risk for the sake of standing up for oneself, or even just making small talk, is worth it. I learned that everyone feels clumsy in new social situations and that this mutual discomfort builds trust between potential friends. Or it doesn’t, and you ride the elevator in silence afterward, but you tried.

I couldn’t have read this chapter at a more pertinent time. I never felt strongly on this topic before being encouraged to connect in the big pond of Penn State, but this analysis has encouraged me to participate in my community. Considering “community” a flexible term, I now consider it ‘civic’ to try and connect in mundane conversation because I don’t like being censored by cell phone vibrations and chimes.