Impressions in Vacuum

One thing that cracks me up about the Internet, in particular, but really, it's true of all human interactions, is the human tendency to fill in all the gaps in contact.  You really can't help it... if you're out of contact with a friend or a family member, and you think of them, you create a picture in your mind of what they're doing.  Old people do this all the time, which is how they get so many crazy notions and conspiracy theories going.  My mother is forever convinced that my brother isn't coming over because he is relaxing at home and doesn't want to be bothered with his old mother.  I can pretty much guarantee that it's much simpler than that: he has forgotten he said he'd come, or when he originally said he'd come, he said "maybe", which is guy-code for "won't" and is girl code for "I'll call you and let you know", which has caused trouble between the sexes for millennia.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been trying to learn Korean.  I don't actually know any Koreans... well, as time goes on, that statement's getting a little less true, but it's still entirely true that nobody in my daily life speaks Korean, and the Korean friends I've cultivated have many better things to do than help me practice and learn.  I do have one "study buddy" who is learning Korean with me, but she has a busy life of her own, and our contact is sporadic and mostly via email.  Sometimes, we write back and forth five times a day.  Sometimes, whole days go by without a sign of her.  She's dating a Korean-American, and he has a Korean-fluent family and community, so she has infinitely more opportunity than I do to be immersed in Korean conversation.

Anyhow, I just realized that when she's out of touch with her email, I always assume that she is in the middle of her boyfriend's family and 이모들이 (his mom's friends), practicing her conversational Korean.  It makes me feel constantly as if I'm getting behind.  It really makes me laugh when she writes to me and tells me she spent all afternoon reading some book series her brother got her into, or some such.  Once in awhile she does write and say she's been at dinner with her boyfriend's family, too, but it's certainly not at all as if that's actually how she spends every minute away from her computer.  Yet my psyche is completely bedrock convinced that's where she is every nanosecond she's not actually replying to my emails.

As part of my studying, I'm also learning from a fantastic site called TalkToMeInKorean.com (TTMIK), which has a website, a Facebook page, various staff members, sister sites that teach other languages, a whole community of students and fans.  For various reasons, I've had some interactions with them in sort of a friendly business capacity, so I have actually not only sent but received a few emails and had ancillary contact with them.

But every time I get no response to something, particularly if I've sent something to the owner that was business-related that I expected an eventual response to, I am like 45% sure I have inadvertently offended them in some way.  I know perfectly well that TTMIK says it has half a million students.  Its Facebook page has over 61,000 likes.  The owner himself has over 4,000 Facebook friends.  He just got back from a language conference trip abroad and TTMIK is preparing for some giant convention in Korea coming up... the fact that I have ever gotten a response to a comment or email actually puts me in a pretty small set.  The notion that I could interpret a lack of response as anything other than "they're busy" blows my mind.  Yet there it is... I am still worried I've offended somebody.

I really think this is just some outgrowth of our natural creature tendencies to be primarily concerned with our own well-being, and that well-being, in turn, being very dependent on our community connectivity.  But in our modern technological age, it gets pretty maladaptive sometimes.  It makes me wonder what kind of batty old lady I'm going to be -- am I going to be wandering the Internet like some kind of virtual dementia patient?  What a comical thought.  How will kindly people shuffle me back home where I belong?