Exploring Human Connection In The Digital Age
oh
i used to live in a house on the south
side of town
it was a brand new development so 270
degrees of my view was
dump trucks and skid loaders and 2x4
skeletons of future homes
but the remaining 90 degrees in my view
was of a small wooded area
in a little pond off to the east i used
to love to go over to that pond and take
pictures because
i could make it seem like i was in a
much more remote location than in my
backyard on the south side of sioux
falls
the sunsets were beautiful and there was
even a little bit of wildlife that would
show itself to you if you held still for
long enough
beyond the pond and the trees you could
see for miles and miles with no visual
obstructions aside from a few
radio towers flashing off in the
distance
one summer in particular i saw an
unusual amount of rainbows
now i’m not talking a little piece of
rainbow in the sky
i’m talking full on arches of color
across the sky and it happened often
anytime there was a rainbow i would grab
my camera and a wide-angle lens and i
would run out of the house and i’d take
a picture of it
one summer evening one of those
beautiful south dakota thunderstorms
came through and dumped a ton of rain on
us
eventually the storm moved on
like they quickly do and the sun began
to shine
perfect rainbow weather right having put
my family on high rainbow alert earlier
in the week they knew what i was up to
when i grabbed my camera and my coat and
i ran out the front door
as i walked down my driveway and eased
towards the trees there it was just as i
had suspected boom this big rainbow
across the sky
i started taking pictures and after a
few minutes
i sensed the presence behind me i turned
around to look and there coming down the
middle of the road was a tiny yellow dot
barefoot in her pajamas it was my
four-year-old daughter jonah she had
snuck out of the house
after me when she saw me go i signaled
for her jonah go back
inside but of course she didn’t listen
to me so i went back and i picked her up
i said jonah what are you doing she said
dad i want to come see the rainbow with
you
i couldn’t really argue with that so i
said she could stay as long as she stood
close to me
and i kept taking pictures of the
rainbow and after a few minutes
i took a few steps back and i crouched
down to her level and i framed her up
inside this rainbow and i kept taking
pictures
there was still a lot of wind from the
thunderstorm that had passed and there
was a lot of debris from these
construction sites that was blowing
around and at one moment
moment jonah had stopped and pointed off
in the distance to warn me
about a piece of trash that was blowing
towards us
i kept taking pictures soon the rainbow
dissipated as they quickly do
and jonah and i made our way back home
to review our impromptu photo shoot
later that night i posted this photo
to all my social media channels as
eddie’s social media savvy dad would do
and i went to bed not thinking much of
it the next morning when i woke up i had
found that the photo had gone somewhat
viral online
and ended up on one of my favorite
websites called reddit
it had been viewed over a million times
just that night
and on reddit it had made it to a place
called photoshop battles
now this is a place where people can
upload images and users can
manipulate and photoshop them in usually
humorous ways
and people can upvote their favorites
now dozens and dozens
of people had taken this picture of
jonah and photoshopped it and sent
it to us and posted them in this thread
we got a pretty good kick out of it me
and my family
now they started pretty tame right it
was jonah
leading her troop of black hawk
helicopters into battle
jonah and michelangelo’s the creation of
david
[Applause]
jonah as a leprechaun trying to find her
pot of gold pretty pretty standard stuff
they got a little more complex from here
though
jonah in the wizard of oz as dorothy
emerald city there in the background
jonah leading some post-apocalyptic
charge into battle on top of her tank
jonah of arc
[Applause]
and probably my favorite of them all
jonah leading george washington and his
man across the delaware
my family and i got a really big kick
out of looking all at all these
photoshop pictures that people were
making of our daughter
these strangers that we were interacting
with from all across the planet why were
they taking time out of their evening to
manipulate this photo of jonah and send
it to us because it was funny
because it was silly whatever the
meaning was it didn’t really matter to
us
because it gave us a lot of joy now i’m
really glad
jonah didn’t listen to me when i told
her to go back in the house that night
otherwise none of this would have
happened
we often think of little girls as cute
and sweet and innocent which i’m sure
they occasionally can be
but when i look at this photo of jonah
i see someone who’s powerful someone
who’s sure of herself
i see a brave and a confident little
girl
and as she grows up and starts to
navigate this crazy world i hope that
she can see herself in that light
and like i said my family and i got a
really big kick out of all these
interactions we were having with
strangers from across the world
and that got me thinking about all the
interactions i have with people in my
everyday life both online
and in the real world the people that i
interact with on twitter
and instagram the person that i’m
standing next to
while i’m waiting in line to get my
coffee my dentist the server at the
restaurant my auto mechanic my
daughter’s teachers
the nice lady that always waves to me as
i’m pulling into my driveway
these seemingly benign interactions that
we have with people
every day that make up a community both
online and in the real world they aren’t
insignificant
i’ve realized that they actually fill me
up in my day
these short positive interactions that
we’re able to have with each other
both online and in person they can be a
refreshing way to break up the monotony
in our day
now through all this i realize that
there are a ton of people
that i occasionally interact with online
and even see in my day-to-day life
that i’ve never actually talked to in
person
we may have connected on a social media
platform because we share mutual friends
of a shared connection but we’ve never
actually stopped to acknowledge each
other
in passing so i decided i wanted to
change that
i made a decision that any time i saw
someone out in public that i recognized
from my online
world i would walk up and introduce
myself like hello
i’m wes eisenhower from the internet
i like that post you made about your dog
wearing sunglasses at the lake and
drinking a beer last week
how are you nice to meet you now this
can sometimes catch people off guard
but generally it’s led to a pretty
positive interactions and
help me feel a deeper connection to my
community online and in the real world
and then i decided i wanted to take it
one step further than that
i made another decision that anytime
someone came across my social media
feed that i found interesting but that
i’d never really talked to
i was gonna send them a message and ask
them if they’d be willing to meet me
and have a coffee and a conversation and
if they were inclined to do so
let me photograph them when we were done
now i did this with over 40 different
people all from my local community
all people who i knew their names
probably and we would probably
acknowledge each other and say hello in
passing but i did not know much more
than that about
any of these people i wanted to see what
it would be like
to give these casual relationships a
foundation to stand on
a platform for us to grow and become
acquainted with each other
in the real world now i sat with each of
these people for at least 30 minutes
but a lot of these conversations lasted
for hours and it’s really kind of funny
to see these pictures today because
these are my friends these are my
colleagues these are people that i
interact with these are people that i
socialize with now
i wish i had a grand take away from all
these conversations that i had
but what i think i learned is a few
things we’re all connected in some way
we’re all just trying to get by
navigating this crazy planet
and trying to figure out how to live our
best lives
none of us really know what we’re doing
we’re just doing it
myself included
now my family has since moved to a
different neighborhood
where i now feel closer to my work and
closer to my community by proximity
so now instead of scrolling past that on
a social media timeline
i’m strolling past him in the park and
stopping to visit for a minute with my
family before moving on
and we know enough about each other from
interacting online that we have a base
to jump off of
i think about how what we know about
each other
from our online presence informs how we
interact with each other in the real
world
while we’re at the park or at the bar at
the restaurant
face-to-face communication involves more
than just words
it involves body language and it tends
to hold more emotional weight
face-to-face communication can be
difficult and lead to uncomfortable
situations
but those uncomfortable situations can
help create empathy and ultimately help
us grow as people do i treat the people
that i
interact online differently than the
people that i know i’m going to see in
my day
i don’t know i think i do but i also
think that these interactions and
relationships we have
can be healthy and fulfilling we’re
sometimes able to skip over the small
talk and avoid discussing
the weather and get straight to the
things that are actually happening
in each other’s lives hey i saw you just
got that job promotion congratulations
tell me about what you’ll be doing
now hey
i saw that cool art project you were
working on my kids love
art tell me how you came up with that
idea
but i think this can also be a
double-edged sword
sometimes our online connections provide
us with more information than we care to
know about each other
we can end up resenting people for how
they represent themselves online
it’s so easy to spend time doom
scrolling on social media
and leave feeling frustrated and filled
with dread and overcome with fomo
this powerful tool that we have at our
disposal has the amazing ability to bomb
us out if we don’t use it correctly
this isn’t a new idea right it’s like
all things that are good and there are
bad we can
choose how to use it
but what if we were more deliberate
about making our experiences online
more educational more joyous and more
inspiring
what if we curated our timelines to be a
better tool
to help us grow in our real lives
if we gave just a little extra thought
about how we engage each other
and purposely broadened our world
perspectives that could positively
impact
how we interact with each other in the
real world
i also think it’s important to embrace
the simple things
if laughing with a bunch of strangers
about how they photoshopped my daughter
into some ridiculous scenes and sent it
to us
via reddit so my family and i could have
a good laugh on a tuesday evening
and that’s what i’m going to do i would
recommend you do the same if the
opportunity
presents itself we could all use a
little more silliness and absurdity in
our lives especially at this moment
and in this moment in time when nearly
every person on the entire planet is
being
affected by a global pandemic
relationships
are inevitably going to look differently
but i also think that leaves us with an
opportunity both as people and
as a community this is a great moment to
reinvent yourself
who do you want to be when we fully
emerge into the world again
if we put just a little more effort into
thinking about the people on the other
end of our social media experiences
as real people our communities would be
a more connected place
and i would encourage you the next time
you’re standing in line for coffee
and you recognize the person next to you
to introduce yourself
take a minute to get to know the people
that you see in passing
a little deeper because you never know
you could be standing next to terry or
ileana or sam
or corey or mato or katrina or rahiwa or
taylor
or johnny or arlinda
and in my experience all these people
were worth
taking the time to get to know a little
get to know them a little better
thank you