Ping

[randy_byers]

LJ posts are a kind of ping. "Anybody out there paying attention?" But whereas ping is trying to determine whether a host/server is out there and reachable -- whether the Other exists and can be accessed -- LJ posts often seem to be a way to determine whether the Self exists. If somebody responds to me, I must be here. This gets to be addictive. If I haven't posted for a while, I begin to feel invisible and immaterial. Likewise if a post gets no response. However, that's only true if I'm regularly on the internet. If I'm away from the internet, well, out of net, out of mind.

I used to have a close friend who I ultimately decided liked to piss people off because it proved that he existed and had an impact on the world. It seemed an unconscious reflex on his part. It wasn't enough to get somebody's attention, he had to provoke an emotional outburst. He was completely impervious to the anger, too. It contained no personal information for him. A bit autistic that way, perhaps. To him what he was doing was just an elaborate form of pinging, although clearly it was a bit of an unconscious power trip too.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on "ping", I'm now wondering what the existential/psychological equivalent of "ping flood" is. Nagging, perhaps.

Comments

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Very good thoughts. I have a current close friend - of sorts, again a rather autistic relationship - who does what you describe, and yes, she does it when, I think, she's decided the conversation has been not paying enough attention to her for too long - it's very strange and you've pegged that way the actual anger created doesn't seem to be the point, nor the actual substance. She did it on Sat in fact,quite suddenly after a perfectly enjoyable evening , and I, who had a lot on my plate at the time, rather radically did not respond but simply walked away and hid in the toilet for a bit. When I came back we resumed pleasantries and later, very unusually, she rang to apoogise for the lapse(though not quite in so many words :-) . I wonder if that's what to do: like dogs, train them by denying attention rather than giving it..

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Probably not a bad idea, actually. I'm impressed that she apologized!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Operant conditioning works on anything with a central nervous system, so there's no reason it shouldn't work on one's friends. And yes, giving attention is one way to reinforce a behavior, withholding it is a way to extinguish the behavior. Well-established behaviors tend to take much longer to extinguish, however.