Depends, it seems quite inhuman to make eye contact while in an online text conversation. Can you imagine you are typing a response on Lemmy and suddenly some eyes appear on your screen looking at you from the post you are responding to?
yes, but that assumes that there is some human quality to the internet. yes, we post emojis and people love cat pics, but there’s still something inherently plastic about all of this - something deeply human that is lost in binary translation, which is why it’s important that we hold on to simple things like using our voices and making eye contact IRL.
Conversely there is something deeply inhuman about the way people IRL constantly lie to each other (often hidden behind euphemisms like “politeness” or “etiquette”) and only talk to those where the first visual impression conforms to their prejudices on who might be interesting or pleasant to talk to.
i’m on the spectrum myself, but i was raised before awareness was widespread. i overcame it, and i’m thankful because it’s a lonely place inside my head compared to the joy of sharing interactions with people IRL.
That’s absolutely fair; I guess, more so, what I was trying to push against is the implication that eye contact is a necessary component of sharing interactions with people IRL (and, rather, it’s perfectly possible to be IRL with others without eye contact), if that distinction makes more sense.
Right but also people rarely expect constant 100% eye contact. The occasional glance to show connection is actually more than enough for basically everyone and can be learned to done pretty easily. Its not needed but even the simple glance of eye contact makes people feel way more seen and heard.
Then you can just talk past each other the rest of the time as is standard.
This. Just 3 or 4 seconds of contact, then look away. A minute or 2 later, do it again. It becomes ingrained eventually. Don’t stare into someone’s soul the entire time. That’s creepy and can be taken as aggression.
when yall stop making eye contact, you’ve truly lost your humanity
Depends, it seems quite inhuman to make eye contact while in an online text conversation. Can you imagine you are typing a response on Lemmy and suddenly some eyes appear on your screen looking at you from the post you are responding to?
For those with aphantasia, simply open a terminal on your Linux machine and run
xeyeswhile you read this comment thread.yes, but that assumes that there is some human quality to the internet. yes, we post emojis and people love cat pics, but there’s still something inherently plastic about all of this - something deeply human that is lost in binary translation, which is why it’s important that we hold on to simple things like using our voices and making eye contact IRL.
Conversely there is something deeply inhuman about the way people IRL constantly lie to each other (often hidden behind euphemisms like “politeness” or “etiquette”) and only talk to those where the first visual impression conforms to their prejudices on who might be interesting or pleasant to talk to.
Some of us are autistic, Harold.
i’m on the spectrum myself, but i was raised before awareness was widespread. i overcame it, and i’m thankful because it’s a lonely place inside my head compared to the joy of sharing interactions with people IRL.
That’s absolutely fair; I guess, more so, what I was trying to push against is the implication that eye contact is a necessary component of sharing interactions with people IRL (and, rather, it’s perfectly possible to be IRL with others without eye contact), if that distinction makes more sense.
Right but also people rarely expect constant 100% eye contact. The occasional glance to show connection is actually more than enough for basically everyone and can be learned to done pretty easily. Its not needed but even the simple glance of eye contact makes people feel way more seen and heard.
Then you can just talk past each other the rest of the time as is standard.
This. Just 3 or 4 seconds of contact, then look away. A minute or 2 later, do it again. It becomes ingrained eventually. Don’t stare into someone’s soul the entire time. That’s creepy and can be taken as aggression.