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by Mz
5678 days ago
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Solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. Some people like their solitude and are probably happy that alternate means to communicate empower them to enjoy more of it. (My attitude seems to be evolving into: "Don't friggin' call me and expect me to drop everything to chat with you. Shoot me an email and I will get back to you within a reasonable period of time without dropping everything like it's some crisis." And I'm a former phone-junkie.) |
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It's not just communication but the ability to easily keep track of where people are in the world and to coordinate meetings and shared holidays. Facebook is particularly good for keeping in touch with old friends and acquaintances because of the contextual information it supplies. I saw recently that a friend I haven't seen in years is spending a month in Thailand and I arranged to change my travel plans so that I would be passing through during the same period. We weren't close enough friends that we would still be in touch if it wasn't for those kinds of coincidental connections.
I also meet a lot of new people through couchsurfing.org and various expat sites. Couchsurfing is particularly interesting because its goal is explicitly to create friendships between people of different cultures. I would probably be much more lonely when traveling without it.