Digital Relationtrips

I can’t think of what else to call them, these online, virtual relationshipstrips of ours that we’re actively building on a fairly consistent basis—digital relationships are a trip.

_Hyperlink

I didn’t know hyperlink was a word before joining #steemit, now I’m doing all kinds of things with them, check out the above one, for example—centered, sized and italicized. Yeah, I didn’t know how to do any of that stuff. Two asterisks (“**”), one on each side of the word makes the letters side-ways—I thought the only way to do that was by clicking the slanted “I” above the content section of the letter. I said “I.” Or paragraph alignment and all of the words on both sides of the page are even—it’s all new. I’m learning the ropes as I go. New, as in, MySpace #new, remember that one? I never did Facebook or Instagram so, whatever your opinion is of MySpace, that’s the only social networking experience I have prior to this one. I was completely unaware #unfollowing someone is considered by some a cardinal sin—you probably already knew that.

It’s so frowned upon, network wide, that I couldn’t find an image that says “unfollow” at Pixabay, Pexels, or Unsplash, all three of them—nothing. I typed “unlike” at all three and this is the best I could do:

_{What’s the big deal?}

Why is that?! Why should we open ourselves up to a feed full articles that don’t interest us? If we can agree that a feed full of uninteresting articles is a waste of time, we can also agree that just one uninteresting article in that feed is a waste of time. I think we only have to see so many uninteresting things in our own feed—that’s why there’s an unfollow button. The #follow button doesn’t say #followforeverorelse!

_{Language barriers}

That’s another one that’s interesting on here—language barriers. I can tell the difference between someone translating English from German, for example, verses someone translating English from Spanish or Aceh. Dialogue, direct or indirect sentences, sarcasm and punctuation translate differently from one language to the next. Even though I’m aware I’m reading a translation and, I’m often translating as well, I still find myself judging sentences differently based solely on a translation app. I’ll explain what I mean.

Depending on the operating system you’re using to read this, we could have access to different apps, plus there’s multiple tech companies delivering the same services, just slightly different from each other. There’s going to be variances across most of our translation apps. Something simple like “thanks for typing this” can translate several ways—A German translation on an android may say something like ‘your typing I’m thankful for’ whereas a Hebrew translation on an iPhone could say ‘typing thankful, I shall be.’ See what I mean? An app, to my understanding of English but not to a Canadian’s, can make the German translation seem more friendly.

_{Ulterior motive}

One more—ulterior motive. The people whom I’ve never heard from and are obviously on my page for one reason—they’re incentivized to do so. I’m not talking about the person who only reads articles featured by the bigger curators and they’re only on the page to claim entry in a third party reward system—not them. I’m talking about the person who did not read the article featured by the bigger curators and it’s obvious they’re only on the page to gain entry to a third party reward system—them.

I have a tough time responding to the person in the second example. I’ve always been nice and I’ll continue to be, I’ll always end my thank you with “thanks for stopping by” but I’ve often wanted to say something else. Something along the lines of, “what would you like to see me respond right here? I already know you didn’t read one word from my article so I’m confident you won’t read this response either—thanks for wasting my time.” But that type of honesty can be conceived as rude and that’s not the persona I’m trying to achieve here.

_{Digital Relationtrips}

If you can relate to any of the three examples above, you should consider joining me and let’s try to alter our judgmental ways. Before I began this article, I thought about my top three pet peeves on here and I could only think of two—I kind of threw the third one in at the last minute. Good, now I know I have three things to work on and, no, I won’t tell which two are the originals.

Unfollowing someone doesn’t mean you wish them harm, you despise that person or worse, it just means you’re not following them anymore—that’s it! I still find myself on some peoples pages from time to time whom I used to follow but, at some point, for some reason or another, I decided not to follow them anymore. That shouldn’t be frowned upon, it’s not a big deal, try harder to gain their attention or something—don’t take it personal. If you get upset about someone unfollowing you or, your virtual feelings get crushed, the alternative would be a social media platform that’s not equipped with an #unfollow button—that would suck.

I don’t have the right to judge anyone. I would never ever ever ever ever judge someone in a face to face conversation for any of the three examples I listed above, why is it acceptable to do so online? It’s not. Think about it, what kind of person would ignore someone at the bus stop for being ‘Chinese’ and using a translation app but are friendly to the ‘Swede’ using a similar translation app? Not cool.

Finally, we all have the right to be on anyone’s page for whatever reason we want, at any time we want, the same goes for viewers on your page, this is the internet—the worldwide web. The internet doesn’t have weekends off or scheduled working hours. There’s nothing wrong with incentives. In fact, if someone is on your page, just say thank you and be grateful for the incentive you’re calling an ulterior motive. Without it, you would have received nothing from them. If nothing is what you’re looking for, a social networking site is probably the wrong place for you—just sayin.

I guess what I’m trying to say is if you wouldn’t judge them on the street for it, in the flesh where you can shake their hand and see their teeth, I don’t think you should judge them digitally for it—it’s the only logical conclusion. To anyone reading this who used to follow me and no longer is, thanks a lot for reading this, I’m glad you made it back if for only this article—thanks! To anyone reading this that I used to follow but no longer am, it doesn’t mean I don’t want to ride bicycles with you or we don’t have crypto in common or we don’t equally enjoy Upvotes, it just means I’m not following you anymore—good night, my eyes are killing me!

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