On Tuesday, I hosted a big party in connection with the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York. I invited people I thought would be interesting; my co-host Jen Bekman brought in her own nominees. Some high-powered people, some who would be famous with a little luck, some without dreams of status. They were all invited because of their ability to interact with one another, to converse, to socialize. Many of them were deep into online social networks, but could they do it offline? I began to wonder (again) about the differences between online and offline interaction.

So I began to re-read what Georg Simmel has to say in his essay “Sociability” — the behavior people exhibit when they “associate” — go to parties and other gatherings of strangers.

Note: These are close paraphrases rather than quotes; I have tried to make an abysmal translation more readable. Throughout, italics are from the original.

Out of this constellation called society, a special sociological structure develops which corresponds to those in art and sport. From the realities of life sport draws its great, essential themes: the chase and cunning; the proving of physical and mental powers; the contest and reliance on chance and the favor of forces one cannot influence…

And just this will show itself more and more as the essence of sociability; that it is made up from numerous fundamental forms of serious relationships, but spared from the frictional relations of real life. Out of its formal relations to real life, by playing at life, sociability takes on seriousness which superficial rationalism always seeks only in the content.

Doesn’t this sound a lot like what goes on online? The artificial collegiality that is encouraged and exists between famous bloggers and the small fry who have just graduated past “Hello World”, when in the “real world” they are universes apart in influence and power? Wait, there are some key rules to sociability:

Sociability, then, is the play form of association [real interaction in society]…. The great problem of association is solved only by sociability. The problem is the difference in significance [rank, wealth] of different individuals in their social milieu.

In sports, this problem is solved by strict rules that apply to all participants, so that any “unfair” advantages are eliminated — everyone wears the same uniform, the umpires and referees are supposed to play no favorites. How does this work at a party, or online?

A very remarkable sociological structure shows up at this point. In sociability, whatever a person possesses outside of the social circle must not interfere. Riches and social position, learning and fame, exceptional capacities and merits of the individual have no role in sociability or, at most, as a slight nuance that dares penetrate into the artificial structure of sociability….

We’ve all seen this — it’s what allows the bank president at a charity ball to speak to the junior clerk at his table as if they were equals, and why it would be rude for him to do otherwise.

Where a connection, begun on the sociable level (and not necessarily a superficial or conventional connection) finally comes to center around personal values, it loses the essential quality of sociability and becomes an association determined by content — not unlike a business or religious relation, for which contact, exchange, and speech are but instruments for ulterior ends, while for sociability they are the whole meaning and content of the social process.

If the bank president says to the junior clerk, “Shut up, you little man, I’ll flirt with your wife if I want to, and not a thing you can do about it,” then the power relations of the real world intrude into the artificial equality created by the sociable event, the spell is broken — and the party is ruined, often for everyone.

This world of sociability, the only one in which a democracy of equals is possible without friction, is an artificial world, made up of beings who have renounced the intensity and extensiveness of life in order to bring about among themselves a pure interaction, free of any disturbing material accent. If we enter into sociability purely as “human beings”, as that which we really are, lacking all the burdens, agitations, and inequalities with which real life disturbs the purity of the picture, it is because modern life is overburdened with objective content and material demands.

This was written in 1910, before (in our minds) modern life even began. How much more true now. But I have certainly felt that exhiliration that comes from conversing with someone without knowing their income, their credentials, or their fame. Meeting someone just as a person. Again, the parallels to an online experience, as in the interaction of a blogger with her commenters, is striking.

Inasmuch as sociability is the abstraction of association — an abstraction of the character of a sport — it demands the purest, most transparent, most engaging kind of interaction — that among equals…. It is a game in which one “acts” as though all were equal, as the he especially esteemed everyone. This is as far from being a lie as art or play are in their departures from reality. But the instant the intentions and events of practical reality enter into the speech and behavior of sociability, it does become a lie — just as a painting becomes a lie when it attempts to be taken for reality.

This is the difference between the customer service rep who treats you like a human being, an equal, and apologizes for the hold time because they’re understaffed, and the dirty, lying, low-down “We realize your time is valuable” recorded hold-chatter. In the first case, a person treats you as an equal, and appeals to your humanity; in the second, you are made to understand that you are a worm and that you have no choice but to wait. As Simmel said, quoted above, the idea that you will be appeased by honeyed hypocrisy is “seriousness which superficial rationalism always seeks only in the content.”

This argument has been made in regard to online marketing in many forms, as if it were a new thought. The relentless focus on “what’s in it for them”; the “give before you get” ethos of many online businesses; the fanaticism of many bloggers in answering their commenters questions — these are all attempts to create a community of equals. And it’s not just about making people feel comfortable so you can part them from their money — there’s something exhilirating for both sides when you feel you are talking to an equal, although (or because) it’s just pretend.

And that, to me, is the essence of interactivity, that’s why online media is fundamentally more powerful than TV or journalism. Like real life, it has the capacity to create the artificial conditions for a real conversation.

If you’re interested in more Georg Simmel (a seminal figure in sociology, though not read enough), I recommend The Sociology of Georg Simmel, which has the essay on Sociability in a much better translation.

Tags: Georg Simmel, sociability, Search Engine Strategies, sociology, conversation, Jen Bekman, Caterina Fake, John Van Couvering

Posted by Antony in: Blogs, Media + Marketing, Search