Is An Internet Neighborhood Bullshit?

I chose Notes from a Neighbor as the title for my new Substack space after it was suggested by a long-time and excellent thought partner, Grace Heerman. When she said it, I knew immediately that it perfectly captured my intentions here.

Today, I want to explore those intentions with all of you though, ‘cause can we really be virtual neighbors or is that just some naïve bullshit?

In The Beginning

About 22 years ago (my gawd), I bought my first ever computer. I’m pretty sure it was actually the first ever computer owned by anyone in my immediate family. It was a Gateway. Remember them? The monitor and keyboard came in one giant box and the tower came in another giant box. Both boxes were printed with a black and white Jersey cow design. Somewhere I have pictures of my daughter playing in those boxes.

I set it up, plugged into the dial-up (my gawd) internet, and started exploring the world wide web. There wasn’t any social media yet. Even MySpace was a year or two away. To that point, my experience with the online world was occasionally using Ask Jeeves to google something (see what I did there?!) and accessing my Hotmail account via computers on my college campus. Yes, it’s true. Rather than anxiety checking our email hourly, we used to just check it if and when we had computer and internet access. (BTW, not ashamed to still be rocking Hotmail. Truly a faithful servant.)

There was this thing called “message boards.” I joined one for backpackers and quickly decided to go on a huge trek through the Beartooth Mountains with my new backpacking friends, of all ages and backgrounds, who were going to meet up in Montana for the trip. I arranged for my mom to watch my daughter for a few days. I think this whole concept of meeting people online was so new, that she didn’t even question whether I was about to be murdered in the wilderness. It was a real, “have fun, Honey” thing back in those days.

Community Beyond Geography

Here's why I’m telling you this long-winded story with some super strong “in my day” vibes . . . I really wanted to try backpacking, but I was poor. I was a rural single mom on welfare and backpacking gear is not cheap. Single moms on welfare, it turns out, are not in Outside magazine's target audience.

I bought that computer, with the help of a Pell Grant and student loans, because I was driving 100 miles roundtrip to take night classes, after working all day, at a college in the city. I realized I needed to make school more sustainable by signing up for these new online classes being offered. I was honest with my new backpacking friends about my situation, and they all threw in and mailed me their old gear for the trip.

I had everything I needed for that first trip, thanks to the generosity of people from all over the country, whom I had not yet met in real life. And who, did not murder me in the wilderness, when I did meet them. Super kind of them, TBH.

Those backpacker friends embodied something profound that the outspoken civil rights leader and rabbi, Joachim Prinz taught, “Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept.”

I think about those words from Rabbi Prinz all the time. The same concept is knitted into the work of Fred Rogers, a man I came to admire deeply around the same time I bought that computer because I only got two TV channels via antenna and PBS was one of them. Watching Mister Roger’s Neighborhood as a tired, young mom I suddenly understood the much larger thing he was communicating. He’d figured out how to use the power of a relatively new medium at the time, television, and created a real, nurturing community.

Notes from a Neighbor is in part an homage to people like Joachim Prinz and Fred Rogers. If we can expand our concept of “neighbor” beyond geography, if we can utilize technology to promote meaningful connections, then becoming internet neighbors is not bullshit. 

That backpacking experience and the work of Prinz and Rogers demonstrated something really important that I leveraged again about 11 years later when I helped establish the AIP community . . . it is possible to foster real communities and tangible support in a virtual space. 

Doable Is Not The Same As Done

Okay, so all of this is warm and fuzzy, but just because it is possible, doesn’t mean creating a healthy, useful online community is inevitable. Social media does exist now and it’s more often than not a swirling cesspool destroying our mental health, not to mention democracy. Even Wired says it’s terrible and we should start over. Not exactly a beautiful place to plant a neighborhood . . . let’s talk about that (authenticity!).

Bo Burnham, a comedian, and filmmaker, but let’s be honest, also a philosopher of our time, was trending recently for this clip of a panel conversation he participated in four years while promoting a film he made. He voices so many things most of us know about social media, but can’t articulate as well as he does. The big one is, “They are trying to colonize every minute of your life . . .”

Yikes. I totally acknowledge that he is right. The effects of that are not good for any of us. My move to Substack is an attempt to deal with that. I’m trying to move at least some of the conversation off social platforms. Mr. Rogers wasn’t advocating for children to sit isolated in their homes, glued to the TV screen 24/7, but he did try to carve out 30 minutes where brave conversations were had in a protected space.

Doable is not the same as done, but maybe it’s possible to do something similar away from the eerily “unconscious” (not totally believable) danger of social media algorithms.

I experienced real connection and personal growth at a point before social media existed, but still through online means, so I have reason to hope it can be done again. There are mountains of other problems and critiques of social media and the internet itself (even if we did manage to carve out a space ala Mister Rogers Neighborhood), to be discussed. I’m not glossing over that, just being practical about how much we all want to rehash it.

Resisting FOMO

Instead, turning our attention to the more practical implications of trying to take these steps makes sense. One of the big implications for me is that it will mean I spend more time off social media platforms. Enter FOMO stage left, whispering, “Nobody is invested in creating community elsewhere. If you step away, it’s done.”

Obviously, one way to push back on that is to ensure our real-world networks are strong and fulfilling. I’m definitely pouring into that personally and advocating for all of you to do the same. But, like I keep coming back to in this note and underpinning my whole motivation to start writing here, I still believe something worthwhile can be built through our virtual connections too. I’ve been both a recipient and a steward of those kinds of online communities.   

Recently, I saw this quote by Matthew Sitman that said, “The question ‘Who is my neighbor?’ can never be answered simply by appealing to borders drawn by men.”

Do you think we can be neighbors, regardless of geography and algorithms? Is an internet neighborhood bullshit? I hope you’ll comment.