I’ve been making observations recently. The fun kind. You can tell if someone is more of an IRL person or an online person with this one cool trick.
As a teen, I didn’t understand why I had to address an email to a particular name. Likewise for IRL letters. I guess there might be more than one inhabitant of a particular address, and a sender would want to ensure that the reader was addressed as the recipient.
At NAT and AlbertaSat, people start their DMs with my name. Isn’t that quaint? That’s quaint, isn’t it? I found it quaint. I don’t address people by name at all, usually. If I know you as a friend, you get “hey”. I don’t like saying names. They’re cumbersome. If I know you both online and IRL, I’ll probably call you by your username. I mean it, I call Trevor “Maple” or “Sparkledog”. If we’re close, you call me “goose”.
It’s quaint behaviour though, because more importantly and very interestingly, a difference in the medium of communication can modify social dynamics. Quaint to me because in a DM, there’s only me. Who else would you be addressing? Why do you want my attention in particular, from the crowd of one, that is, me? You say someone’s name when you want a particular person’s attention from a group of people who would otherwise be attentive. You say my name, but my name is right there. Are you trying to remind yourself of whom you’re contacting? Same thing with @-pinging in DMs. Why do you need my two of my attention? I’m getting notified either way.
So it’s quaint because I’m so used to this medium of communication that literal speech is second to text. You’re all tourists in my world… I’ve never said a lamer thing. This is just one of the more benign examples of how technology changes behaviour and social dynamics.
My perspective on the impacts of technology takes inspiration from disability studies. Imagine that you have no legs. You still have to get groceries, go to school, get home, go to work, get home, cook, sleep, clean your home, and everything else. But you have no legs. A wheelchair user will arrange their room in a different way, may shower less frequently, have less money, have less time - all as a result of simply not having legs.
In my example, communicating strictly through text, I become extremely accustomed to the social environment that is a direct message, and I find it quaint when I am addressed by name in a DM, because there is no need to address me by name online, in a one-on-one conversation.
More generally: any given human will differ in ability from what we would call an archetypal human. However, the needs of that human are the exact same as the archetycal human. It needs to fulfill its social needs, communicate, eat, sleep, so on. How does it best make use of its those abilities to fulfill its needs? You don’t even need to think of yourself as different, or utilize a particular technology to know what this is. You smile, because you have the ability to convey a particular emotion by doing so.