Slightly Off KIlter

You’re sitting with a group of friends, perhaps a dozen at most, at a gathering of your favorite kaffeeklatch. Everyone has a mug of coffee or tea, hot chocolate or punch, or (at this time of year) maybe cider or eggnog. You’re munching on some incredible calorie-free cookies from a recipe you found on the Internet.

Everyone has a cat on his or her lap; other cats lounge around the room. Occasionally a dog wanders through, although he never stays long. Everyone is smiling and laughing and talking. Conversations run together like streams of water. This is your daily chance to unwind, to share conversation with friends.

One woman is talking about her recent vacation; another about an amusing incident in the grocery store today; a third mentions that she is counting the days until the upcoming visit by her daughter and grandchildren. Conversation is light and easy; you’re friends.

Suddenly you realize one conversation has changed. A woman near you is now talking about her abusive father; her brother is in jail; her sister-in-law is an alcoholic. You’re shocked momentarily into silence. You begin to feel uncomfortable.

In the lull of conversation, someone else begins to talk about her bad day. First her car wouldn’t start, then she was late; she had a run-in with her boss, a co-worker was out sick and she had to do his work too. You begin to “hear your family calling”. Maybe you’ll just leave and come back tomorrow when things have calmed down again.

As you stand to make your goodbyes, you catch a glimpse of faces beyond the footlights (The Footlights?!) Suddenly you remember; this living room is only a stage set. The 10 or 12 of you are carrying on your conversations in front of an audience of 100 people you’ve never met. As you now know more about two women’s lives than you really wanted to know, so do those 100 people in the audience. But… who are they? Are they your friends too? How much do they know about you?

You vow to think about these things when you get home.

Welcome to the world of the online “group” or mailing list, where a minority of the membership is responsible for a majority of the conversation; where the charter of the group (which topics are “permitted” and which are not) may be more (or less) elastic; where the moderator’s word is law, where we get to know some members very well, some better than we wished, and many not at all; where our “private” conversations are less private than we think.