{"id":1068,"date":"2015-11-30T08:05:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-30T13:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/?p=1068"},"modified":"2015-11-30T16:38:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-30T21:38:56","slug":"friending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/friending\/","title":{"rendered":"Following and Friending"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robin<\/a>A book I once read began with a proposal \u2013 what if all the lonely people in New York City were to open their windows at 11PM and howl into the night sky? To me this is the image of Facebook and Twitter, only, there the whole world is howling, and people from all over find and follow one another. The cacophony seeps into everyone\u2019s emailboxes as each hollering is echoed and replied to, over and over. A recent yowling<\/a> of my own on Facebook received a massive 90 likes. Lots of comments. I joyfully followed and friended and thanked as many fellow yowlers as I could.<\/p>\n

My daughter blogged when she got cancer in 2008. Back then I thought blogging was some sort of techie cult activity; I didn\u2019t dare visit her site<\/a>. But people followed her and she felt supported. Following her death, I tried to follow her lead, first venturing into Facebook, eventually journeying on to Twitter and Pinterest. I set up my own website and blog. I followed all the rules, followed people\u2019s advice, and followed my heart \u2013 and still ended up crying alone in the car every day. In a daze, I followed my friends who dragged me out of the house. I followed my dead daughter to Australia. I followed her dog into the woods, over streambeds, and through grassy fields.<\/p>\n

These days I follow people in online groups: communities around child loss, cancer, gratitude, hiking, food, signs from departed loved ones. In the process of all this following, I apologize if I\u2019ve become a nuisance, nagging you to \u201clike\u201d my new Facebook writer page<\/a>, pestering you to subscribe to my blog. There are differences between followers and friends, I\u2019ve learned. As an author building a platform, I value them both.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll your hard work will soon be paid off,\u201d reads the Chinese cookie-fortune taped onto my computer. It is paying off. The \u201cfriends\u201d I\u2019m finding by increasing my social media presence make me laugh. They make me cry. Mostly, they make me feel that I am not alone. In the middle of the night I tweet to a bloke in England. I chat with a mum in Australia. During my days dashing around Ithaca I smile, embarrassed, but delighted to be stopped.
\n\u201cI loved your last blog,\u201d said a woman at the gym, who I know only from Facebook.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re \u201cfriends,\u201d said a stranger in a restaurant, \u201con Facebook.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where do you find new friends? How does the internet add value to your life?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A book I once read began with a proposal – what if all the lonely people in New York City were to open their windows at 11PM and howl into the night sky? To me this is the image of Facebook and Twitter, only, there the whole world is howling, and people from all over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[374],"tags":[678,677,679,683,680,681,682],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-374","tag-facebook-friends","tag-following-and-friending","tag-following-on-twitter","tag-grief-community","tag-online-support-groups","tag-social-media-sites-blogging","tag-you-are-not-alone"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robinbotie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}