Kate Bolick writes for The Altantic about a woman she knew peripherally at a former workplace. Bolick didn’t know the woman well — they worked in different departments — and both of them eventually left the company.
The woman later friended Bolick on Facebook, and in fact dominated Bolick’s news feed with tales and photos of her active and exciting social life. Next, the women, whom Bolick calls “S” in the article, embarked on a long-distance relationship with a man in London, and Bolick followed the narrative of their romance and eventual engagement. At about this point, Bolick writes …
… A year had passed since S had friended me. We never exchanged messages, or commented on one another’s postings, or saw each other in person (save for one early, awkward encounter in a furniture store, during which it took me a moment to place who she was). Yet I thought about her often, even when I wasn’t on Facebook, as I would any close friend in a similar joyful circumstance. More, in fact: her news thrummed inside my chest as if it were my own. I wondered where the wedding might take place, what she would wear.
Then, Bolick was in a house-sitting/pet-sitting situation with very limited Internet access. During a moment of access, in a torrent of e-mails, Bolick found one from a former colleague who announced that S had died. Bolick writes:
A loud sob broke out of me, like a bark. It was a frightening sound in that too-quiet house. I stood up, heart racing, and paced the rooms, switching on any lamp I could find. But the rooms weren’t familiar to me, and their features — shelves sagging with books I’d never read; ropes of garlic garlanding a cupboard; decades of dirt caking the floor seams — only enlarged my sense of unreality. Even the smudged windows framed a night so black that I could see nothing there but my own pale face. How do you cry for someone you hardly know?
Now here’s the kicker with which Bolick ends her article:
And for what was I crying? S or her story?
Wow. Nowhere have I seen better evidence that social media is storytelling media. Given that Bolick had met S, it’s possible Bolick was crying for the person rather than the story. Most likely, she cried for both.
But I immediately thought about all my friends on Facebook whom I’ve never met. (Out of curiosity, I calculated that 31 percent of my Facebook friends are people I’ve never met.) Two in particularly stand out as women I would most emphatically grieve for if they passed on. I can imagine feeling sad if any of my never-met virtual friends died, but I believe I would have the kind of emotional breakdown Bolick did about these two specifically. Why these two? Because I know their stories. I have gotten to know them, followed their lives, rejoiced at their triumphs, tut-tutted at the things that annoy them, and empathized with their difficulties.
Stories create powerful emotional connections.