In Eric’s 2000 article called Love on the Line he asks, “In relationships, are there any virtues to virtuality?” He goes on to say: “If we’re really paying attention, though, we can see that loving people online does something else that is quite surprising. It can strip away the masks that cover the extent to which all relationships are composed of internal psychological dynamics. It removes the costume covering how much of what we experience in so many realtime entanglements is actually some kind of internal virtual reality; that is, a fantasy, and how much of the working-out we do with others is really working out ourselves.”
There has been a dialogue brewing since the Weinergate scandal — which I find healthy — giving us some very juicy, wide open room for exploration: What happens to you when you ‘connect’ with someone online? Do these interactions ‘count’ as true connection? Was what Congressman Weiner did a form of adultery or a fantasy?
For a person my age, perusing these questions feels like a visit to the future, or a science fiction short story. But it’s the present day and now in the news. In the 10 years since Eric wrote Love on the Line, we’ve moved from emails, chat rooms, blogs, cell phones and computer cameras to iPhones that peer into your living room and see what you’re eating for breakfast.
On my iPod Touch I’ve got FaceTime, which uses iPod’s video camera to make a face-to-face call with friends and family. I have to think twice before checking in with the kids using FaceTime, especially before 8:00 am or after 11:00 pm on the weekends. I’m not sure any one of us could brace ourselves for what we might see of each other. There are some things a loving aunt should not see of the twenty-somethings in her family.