Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.

Early evening in Chicago.  I’m reading a textbook.  A woman walks in. I recognize her from … ?  After 10 seconds of looking for the Waldo in my head and I spot him.  He’s flying a blue bird, Twitter.  Yes, Twitter.  V added me a couple weeks earlier, we once chatted about a mutual musical interests (Mount Kimbie & Gold Panda).  Unlike me, she’s a 140-master and updates often so I’ve seen her goings-on for the past couple weeks. Sure enough, she writes she’s in that same cafe.

So, what now?  Surely it’s odder to sit quietly and/or communicate with somebody who doesn’t know you’re 10 feet from them. Social media is, at least nominally, social. If she tweets about her thoughts and locations multiple times a day, she must be open to spontaneity.  If anything, it’s creepier and voyeuristic not to say hello, right? Also, she runs a web site that’s cool and I wanted to hear about.  So in the end, I follow my better-to-regret-doing-than-not-doing mantra and go to introduce myself. 

She’s embarrassed despite my unthreatening advance (I wasn’t hitting on her). After the fact, she did what I knew her for, and typed:

Recognized via twitter while tweeting emo shit in the coffeeshop. #thatjusthappened

Unsurprisingly, she didn’t remember our web chats but that wasn’t the point.  I explained that this was the less creepy of my options and thought I’d simply say hi. Apparently though, she shares that she’s stayed incognito in such situations before (read: I violated protocol). 

So if you post your name, photo, thoughts and locations all while easily beginning dialogue with strangers online, an “IRL” sponto hello doesn’t fly. It seems awkward won, so I returned to my book after an odd goodbye and left the cafe soon after.

Doubly embarrassed, as the boy was very nice.

Ha.  So my being friendly is more embarrassing?  Somebody get me a copy of Book for Kids Who Can’t Tweet Good.  Still, I’m trying to take positives from my odd pseudo-rejection.

On platforms like Twitter at least, social media is much more media than social, no matter how open and “friendly” users (who I thought were once people too) are. This comes as no surprise to most but I had some naïve idea that the divide between web and world is not so wide.  If anything, I can rest comfortably in my wider world of webonymity.  With that, I guess, see you later — in silence…

img: thx.

Walk through Kreuzberg or Friedrichshain on any given weekday at 2pm and you’ll see the cafés buzzing with business.  It didn’t take me long to understand that 9-5 was not the grind people followed here.  Instead, freelancing is the main name of the game, with a slew of graphic designers, choreographers and DJs among the strangers I bump into here.  Aside from feeling increasingly artistically illiterate with every encounter, I was getting used to this trend. With the arrival of spring, though, I’m beginning to think that’s so 2009.  The new sensation?  Online start-ups.

Yes, Silicon Valley, meet your newest rival: Technotown.  I have to admit this sounds strange but with Berlin-based online newbies like Daily Deal and eDarling popping up around town, “freelancer” is no longer the only catchphrase round these parts.  Though the folk I’ve met connected with these sites are admittedly party promoters and metal musicians, it shows that my digitally illiterate side will also see more sun this Spring.

It seems, too, that my cybershock is misplaced.  It tuns out Berlin isn’t an e-wasteland at all.  With globally recognised and reputable sites like Soundcloud based here, it is far from being a simple village, it’s a fully fledged e-town.

So the 2010 Spring collection isn’t being exposed on catwalks with the paparazzi snapping outside but on the information superhighway with the twitterati blogging inside.  This place is a lot more than minimal, it’s technical.  Time for me to stop thinking CSS is just a band and get clicking with the crowd.

image: thx.