In 2021, Michelle Goldberg’s article went viral. Not for its content, but rather the title: “We Should Know Less About Each Other.” Its passive aggressive tone and no specifics on what we should not know about each other has made it a popular meme to paste on sites like Twitter— where people put out TMI tweets about their raunchy sex lives or their parasocial relationship with a 2D character. Personally I don’t mind, but that’s neither here nor there. Goldberg was actually talking about how online political arguments polarize people and that there was no benefit in creating these vitriol driven discourses if it doesn’t actually educate anyone.
But I don’t care about that. I mean, I do, but not in this article.
People have taken the title of her piece and turned the conversation into an online social commentary: people should keep some things personal and not vent to strangers online. Hey, there are things that are meant to be secrets! But I don’t think I would be wrong in saying that there are people who crave human interaction to the point of desperation. Social media happens to be an easy and quick fix to this hunger, but it’s not sustainable because it was never meant to be a substitution to real human interaction. If we want to foster human connections, we should have this conversation in real life— literally. I feel like we actually should know more about each other, but not in an invasive way. How many times do we pass by people that we could actually have meaningful relationships with? Even if it’s fleeting, is it not worth embracing?
Here is an example: After a long Thursday, I was on a bus back home. After two stops, the entire bus was flooded with Asian people- me included, of course, but it was very clear that there was something going on that I wasn’t a part of. I felt bad for the people who had to stand, so I offered a seat to one of the girls. Initially, I was going to live in ignorant bliss. I just got done with two classes and a longer-than-usual RSO meeting, but I’ve been trying this new mindset where if I have something on my mind, especially a question of some sort, I say it out loud. I tapped the girl’s shoulder and asked, “Why are there so many Asian people here?”
I think if I wasn’t Asian, it could have gotten really slippery really quick, but at the moment I couldn’t find a way to phrase it in a less confrontational manner. However, the girl smiled and said, “Oh, it’s a KSA ice skating event. I think everyone here is headed there.”
I wasn’t going to say anything else, and at that moment I was slipping my headphones back on, but then she asked about me. It then snowballed into a rather amicable, lovely conversation. We got to bond about our respective student associations, mine being VSA and her’s KSA.
Another time, I got to class early, slightly mad at my recent quiz score: a 50%. I read the assigned reading front, back, left to right, right to left, upside down, and still failed it. I was prepared to sit in my own pity, but then another person walked in and I had to pretend to be a nonchalant cool kid with too many text notifications on my phone (I had zero). But amidst me scrolling up and down my already-opened emails, I decided that this facade wasn’t helping me, especially my frustration. I put my phone down and called across the room, “hey, uh, what did you get on the test?”
We actually had a cathartic conversation that lit up, especially with the presence of another kid who was also pissed about the quiz. In his words, he said, “I thought I was smoking too much but I guess since everyone is getting flunked I don’t need to stop.” Eventually this conversation trickled to something entirely unrelated to class, and at that point, I wasn’t too mad about the quiz. We became trauma bonded, I guess.
What I am trying to get at is that despite my introversion, I thoroughly enjoyed these small interactions, and I’d like to think the people I talked to enjoyed it as well. Fleeting as they were, I realized the people around me are far more relatable and friendly than the people I found online. Despite being surrounded by people who share the same algorithm online, I felt a more genuine connection. I also think my self esteem went up. Beforehand, I thought everyone around me were far more interesting people with far more friends, but when talking to these once-strangers, I realized I also have interesting things about myself that people are curious about.
Now, not every stranger needs to be a close friend- I feel like these brief conversations become an indicator of emotional intelligence, as you begin to navigate what are the appropriate ways to have a conversation with a stranger versus someone you know; social media makes that distinction more precarious.
Maybe your friend won’t mind you randomly saying, “I think people who like feet are weird,” but most likely your local stranger would.