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

[kim-huett.livejournal.com]

How I'd put it is that Facebook is close to being a pure example of ping. Anything which allows for response is a ping device but in the case of LiveJournal (or any number of other networks where original work can be posted, Flickr, deviantART etc, etc) there is also the satisfaction of creation. As you yourself have noted writing reviews to post here fills a need other than connecting with others. If you write a review and nobody responds you still have the satisfaction of creation because writing that review has allowed you to examine your response and set it out in a coherent way. Facebook on the other hand isn't really about creation (though you can use it that way if you try hard enough) but about taking quizzes or posting videos etc, activities which require little or no creativity, and sending the results as a ping. In the Facebook model then the ping is the most important part of the process, so long as other people keep sending you quizzes and videos you know you're in the social loop.