In the ‘Followers vs. Friends’ debate, controversial one-time Yale prof & full-time lit crit William Deresiewicz writes that the Internet arrived as an incalculable blessing – let’s never forget that. It allows isolated people to communicate with one another & marginalized people to find one another. The busy parent staying in touch with far-flung kids. Or the gay teenager no longer has to feel like a freak. But as its dimensionality grows into a kind of dementia, friendship takes a hit. Ditto solitude. Who wants to be alone anyhow?

The 20th century understood friendship thru the tendency of memory (the more unbidden, the better as Proust reminds, seeing how heaven-of-the-past is a promised land ruined in the reaching) as if it could be recognized only after its loss, & as if loss were inevitable. And that which is left -- the remainder -- lies in the heart.

Fast forward in the 21st century to Facebook, Twitter & the next whatever, where in social-porn networks friendship becomes an ever-expanding circle that engulfs the whole world &, in so doing, cannabalizes both itself & the old-school classical friends (that seemingly lifelong 1-on-1 bond). Their very premise—and promise—is that they make friendship circles visible. There they are, friends all, & all in one place. Except, of course, they're not in the same place. And they're not really friends. They're simulacra with a ‘sense’ of community, little dehydrated packets of images & info, no more friends than a set of baseball cards is the NY Yankees.

Countless people, none of whom hardly ever meet one another. They add up to a loop, a public grope embracing & encircling the globe to violate laws of intimacy as well as geometry. Just a dataset of points... wandering the electronic caves somewhere among themselves in the mirage of emotional proximity.

Maybe Thoreau over-reacted with "God is alone but the Devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion". But, then again, as Marcus Brigstocke points out, “Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching pills & listening to repetitive music.”

Maybe it’s just generational & the young by being perpetually plugged into the electric-hive avoid self-destruction by paradoxically sacrificing themselves, & admirably so: they, the bridge to the future of the singularity moment where Robo sapiens inherit the past.

So forget 3-hour conversations about character thru action (‘what’s that?’) & its retrospection - Marilynne Robinson’s 2nd self. Now it’s ‘get a 2nd life, baby’.

Which leaves a mass of visible broadcasters / micro-celebs (spilling their consumer preferences for market researchers to analyze)... live from... not NY / SNL... just wherever... & please answer back to confirm this existence.

OK, now time to check the apt-named iPhone – could be a booty-text from some robocall... or a screed from John F. Walter’s Avatars & Abattoirs series:

Dorian

No larking about when the urgent screens blink.
Tweak strange ware's flow lest cheery rules fool you.
Defenstrate the inner doggie who window shops
for the impossible good. Aura's gone back web.
These bullets aim at me before they strike random marks.
Forage for deep story lest you be set up in fast frame.
Leave all trinkets behind in visited worlds before logout.
Storage is futile. Assigned roles, missions, talismans
execute life cycles whirling beyond your meated age:
Confabulations chase downloads. Molds haunt molts.
Acceleration in flux equals nothing new sooner.
Suspect any 3rd person POV, image or official voice
but listen keenly for disguised bleats of tribal hum:
The slaughter takes place just under your threshold.
Never assume sensibilities in your branded peers,
for they no longer hold tea times in the Athenaeum
nor Sunday symposiums. They've moved on to neuro labs,
in time will smash the coded odes of wifi crowdlings.
Note the shift to mass zombie pride with zero regret
for it is theirs to play and die, yours to stay mindful
while reasoning hard why, yet signifying why not.
Devour data as if it gave off rutting scent, or mortal stink.
Dismantle giveaways that melt into checked box horizons,
Or brands that appear from lotuses offering backyard obelisks
or tony pitches to join mandarin claques. Platforms subsume,
husk faster than the cyclops and maidens they vomit.
Grow monstrous. Keep your roving hydra cams vigilant
for zigzag strokes under orthogonal nets. A smarter beast
lurks in you: pads of light vanish into unforeseen air.

NOTE: names are monikers used by people with their icons or avatars on the net, but it isn't their online characters who are talking, nor their 'real personalities', or even their alter-egoes... but rather their etched, encrusted human souls