{"id":439,"date":"2012-01-12T20:31:59","date_gmt":"2012-01-13T04:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/?p=439"},"modified":"2015-12-07T20:06:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-08T04:06:32","slug":"a-single-context-for-all-social-interaction-merely-quixotic-or-dangerously-misguided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/12\/a-single-context-for-all-social-interaction-merely-quixotic-or-dangerously-misguided\/","title":{"rendered":"A Single Context for All Social Interaction: Merely Quixotic, or Dangerously Misguided?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently read a blog post by Leo Widrich, the co-founder of Buffer, entitled “Why do we have so many lives?<\/a>” In it, Mr. Widrich says:<\/p>\n

We have a private life, a public life. We have a work life, a school life, a party life, a love life and I am sure you can name lots of others. I never understood why.<\/strong>… I always felt that it is hard enough to focus on getting one life right. Why create so many? (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This guy<\/span> is a startup founder. I expect he may well be typical of the genus. And so, he makes a great example of why so many startups*<\/a> seem to be promoting the “single identity” model. It’s nice that this guy feels he can have just one life — though even he admits it’s hard! But the rest of us don’t really want to deal with everyone on the same single channel<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Widrich claims that: “I can walk into a club and speak the same thoughts I have in my head to a girl, as I can to my family. And again I can speak with the same mindset to my co-founder, give an interview or play football.” Personally, I can’t help but wonder if that’s really<\/em> working out for him. The pitch you use to woo an investor is quite seriously different from the kind you use to woo a woman. The way you talk to your girlfriend is very different from the way you talk to your mother or sister (I sincerely hope!).<\/p>\n

In fact, I can’t help but wonder if this is a manifestation of Asperger’s Syndrome, or some other failure (or refusal) to understand social interaction. Regardless, it seems like a very clear example of a geek-specific sort of fallacy<\/a> that — I’m starting to think — may underlie the various new systems that try to enforce single identities:<\/p>\n

Figuring out the rules for social interaction is hard<\/em>. One of the hardest parts is figuring out which rules<\/em> apply in what contexts<\/em>. Wouldn’t it be great to just have one context for everything?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No. No, it would not.<\/p>\n

Most of us react with some consternation when our contexts collide unexpectedly — for example, meeting a co-worker (or boss!) at the supermarket (or worse, nightclub or bar!). Most of us don’t want our boss to see us drunk<\/em>, or trying to pick people up. We don’t even really want to introduce our boss to our friends and have to try to integrate them into the conversation. Of course, being a startup founder, Mr. Widrich (like guys like Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page) doesn’t have a boss<\/strong>, and so doesn’t have to worry about this.<\/p>\n

The combination of “boss privilege” and “desire of poorly-socialized people to not have to deal with so many social contexts” makes a powerful one-two punch, and it may go a long way toward explaining the recent spate of apps that try to enforce single identities. In the meantime, I’m happily using Seesmic<\/a> as my mobile phone’s Twitter client, because it has excellent<\/em> support for multiple accounts.<\/p>\n

*<\/span> I include Google and Facebook in this category. They still think they’re startups, they still think like<\/em> startups, and they still have the startup culture and mindset, even if they’ve grown into ginormous corporations. ^back<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

An Addendum:<\/strong> If you think the desire for multiple identities and contexts is just “an old people issue”, as LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman recently described “privacy” in Davos<\/a>, then ask any teenager: Would you like to hang out with your parents, in the same way you hang out with your friends? How about your teachers?<\/p>\n

If you have any doubt what their reaction would be, you don’t know teenagers very well.<\/p>\n

By the way, a word to Mr. Hoffman: Apparently the new common wisdom is that LinkedIn is also<\/a> “for old people”<\/a>, so you might want to rethink your company’s stance on privacy. And quit pissing off your own target market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read a blog post by Leo Widrich, the co-founder of Buffer, entitled “Why do we have so many lives?” In it, Mr. Widrich says: We have a private life, a public life. We have a work life, a school life, a party life, a love life and I am sure you can name lots […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[63,108,122,96,76,29,91,64],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":672,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kagan.mactane.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}