On Easter Sunday 2020, Andrea Bocelli sang solo at the Duomo cathedral of Milan. I got the invitation on a WhatsApp group from a friend noting the time of the concert in Cairo. The dress code was whatever, since the audience was invisible to one another, save for a numeric audience counter. About 3.4 million people logged in for the concert exclusively on YouTube (about 2 million logging in within 10 minutes of start time, the numbers fluctuating as the concert progressed). As the daylight shone in through the window early in the afternoon in NJ, I see my reflection on the glass of my computer screen juxtaposed on a lone Bocelli singing ‘Amazing Grace’ in front of the cathedral late in the Italian afternoon. The producers inserted video showcasing the currently empty streets of London, Paris, and NYC. Music for Hope, the concert was called.
At the same time on my phone, a friend posted a picture on Facebook captioned “guess why I’m half dressed up again?” It was a virtual wedding. Daily reminders of our impending finitude may be inciting people to get on with big life decisions.
A joke going around social media is that if this pandemic happened two decades ago, the most connected we could be at home was listening to cable news and playing the one game that existed on our pixelated phones. With the myriad of online platforms and broad bandwidth potential, people have the option to bricolage their experiences to mimic in person interactions rather than to put life on hold indefinitely. I’m reminded of myths and scriptural narratives of instantaneous global transport. It’s not jinn powering this though, it’s manmade technology.
I read Turkle’s “Alone Together” and “Reclaiming Conversation” in which we are cautioned of the loss of campfire conversation and complete solitude. I’m part of the guilty generation. I’m an older millennial who only remembers her first decade of life uninterrupted by virtual connectivity. By adolescence, I could dial into the internet on my computer and send words back and forth to people halfway across the world. While the uninterrupted human experience could be an experiential ‘loss’, the human experience of being online and the expanded possibility it allows could be an experiential ‘gain’. Should it be insinuated as morally inferior to physical presence? Especially now, when we can’t afford physical presence?
Quarantine has stratified opportunity by privileged access to space, physical and virtual. A few optimists would say families can spend more time together and have dinner around the table. This assumes you have the privilege to be with your family, and dinner guaranteed. As evidenced by the questions in relationship support groups on Facebook, families have had to renegotiate connection. Children of divorced parents need to quarantine with one parent and contend with virtual connection with the other, despite whatever legally arranged custody agreements. Grandparents see their newborn grandchildren for the first time on screen. Hospitals have limited arrangements for kin to be present, but some have arranged for iPads to give a semblance of connection. Fear, nostalgia, humor and resilience are apparent themes in online interactions. We’re at war, but there’s no obvious human enemy. The mass graves of unclaimed bodies lost to COVID19 shown in news stories might one day be commemorated as the ‘unknown soldiers’ of this war.
Multiple deaths are shared as statistics, but the tragedy is much more heartfelt when stories are shared online by the people experiencing them. While there is no shortage of content analysis of online spaces, it’s present anthropological opportunity to reconsider what makes our connections ‘really human’. What is this pandemic showing us about connecting as humans when the physical body isn’t a factor? There are so many possibilities when there is a peeling of the categories that define us in the physical realm. What is an ‘authentic’ relationship? How does kinship manifest on Facebook? How do online support groups effect participants? What affinities do we have to one another online? How are these ‘networked publics’ (boyd p8-9) exploitable?
These are all broad questions, but maybe the moment begs us to ask more questions first.
Citations:
boyd, danah. 2014. It’s Complicated : The Social Lives of Networked Teens. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Turkle, Sherry. 2015. Reclaiming Conversation : The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. New York: Penguin Press.
Turkle, Sherry. 2017. Alone Together : Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. New York: Basic Books.
Sara O. Ahmed 