I was in New York City last week for work. Before I left Los Angeles, my boss asked if I was “freakishly tall,” or “abnormally short”? Her question was odd, but not unreasonable. Although we’d worked together for eighteen months, we’d never met IRL, as the kids say. “I always find it a little jarring to meet someone face-to-face when you’ve been on Zoom with them for so long,” she explained. I knew what she meant. To the best of my knowledge, scientists haven’t studied the disorienting feeling that occurs when digital expectations meet physical realities, but if / when they do, I think they should call it the Floating Head Phenomenon.
Prior to my trip, I knew my coworkers weren’t floating heads on Zoom, and I assumed they knew I wasn’t a floating head either. Floating heads are rare, unless you’re dealing with ghosts. But remote workers and their colleagues have to take it on faith that the people they see on Zoom aren’t floating heads. Sure, you could ask them to stand up and show you their legs, but that’s the kind of thing HR frowns on. So the best way to deal with this question is to ignore it. Which is what I did, until last week.
As it turned out, every floating head I knew wasn’t a floating head at all. Everyone had torsos, legs, and feet. They were also three-dimensional people, not two-dimensional avatars. A few people were shorter than I had imagined, most were taller than I’d expected. None of them had mute buttons, and the space behind them was never blurry. Also, they spoke in full sentences, never once relying on emojis to communicate.
The Floating Head Phenomenon is unique to the digital age, but its roots are quite old. Thousands of years ago, people who weren’t in the same physical location relied on word of mouth to get to know each other. Perhaps the people who had first heard about Jesus from one of his twelve apostles were surprised to learn that he wasn’t a blonde dude with blue eyes when they actually met him. Eventually, letters supplemented word of mouth, allowing people in different physical locations to conduct business, fall in love, and even plot events that changed the course of history. For example, several members of the Continental Congress must’ve remarked that George Washington was a lot taller than he sounded in his letters. And then came the telephone, which made it possible to talk — actually talk! — to people you’d never met face-to-face. But getting to know someone through their disembodied voice conjured two versions of the same person in your head. There was the person you imagined them to be, and the person they actually were. Oftentimes, those two versions turned out to be incongruous, as illustrated by the video for Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion.
What’s different about the digital age, I think, is that we complain a lot more. Receiving a letter was exciting! And even if the letter contained bad news, nobody blamed the medium, or the Post Office. Ditto for telegraphs and telephones, which were considered modern marvels. Prank calls and wrong numbers came with the territory, but I never heard anyone blame AT&T. Also, I love prank calls, which were ruined by caller ID, and wrong numbers, which aren’t what they used to be in the age of robo calls and scammers.
But internet technologies get a lot of shit. Maybe some of that blame is because the tech optimism of the nineties and early aughts hasn’t turned out as advertised. And maybe tech gets the blame because a hyper-connected world makes communication frictionless to the point that we take communication for granted and behave like entitled assholes. Also, tech gives off a real feudal vibe, so maybe the backlash isn’t about the tools Silicon Valley makes, but the tools who own Silicon Valley and want to own the world and everyone in it. My personal belief, however, is that because planes, trains, and automobiles make it possible for anyone on Earth to meet anyone else on Earth, IRL, the internet always feels like a poor substitute. In other words, floating heads are good, but they’ll never be as good as heads that are attached to bodies.
I probably knew that before my trip, but braving a government shutdown, cramming myself into a flying metal tube, and hauling my ass three thousand miles from home was a good reminder that there’s always something missing online. It’s a mind-fuck, because digital closes the geographic distance between people, but at the same time it opens up an infinite amount of space between our perceptions and reality. As an anxious person I fill that space with self-doubt and corrosive assumptions. As an anxious society, we fill that space with fear, loathing, and rage.
Meeting my colleagues face-to-face filled in a lot of gaps for me in the best possible way. There’s a big difference between someone posting a fire emoji in reference to a piece you wrote and that same someone shaking your hand, smiling, and saying, “your writing is fire, Michael.” The emoji is nice, but it feels too easy, too small, and too disposable. The face-to-face conversation, on the other hand, comes standard with cues and context that give the same compliment a lot more meaning. Also, the degree of difficulty in the physical world is significantly higher, which is why it’s so much more rewarding.
Still, I don’t think it’s a contest between the digital and the physical. At least, it shouldn’t be a contest. I want to be grateful for both, because I believe the more ways we can come together, the better. But there’s a paradox there. Because as we make connection easier and easier, we have to work harder and harder to actually communicate.
A short story collection for people who 💚 Situation Normal
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