I love the advances that modern technology has blessed my life with but sometimes I think I'd give it all up in a heat beat to be a member of high society Victorian England. Of course I'm almost positive that that era has been horrible over glamorized and probably consisted mainly of a lot of unhappy forced marriages and disease. Still I think I'd at least enjoy getting to go to a ball. Those things don't really exist nowadays. Dancing has turned into something very animalistic and it honestly disturbs me. That isn't to say that there aren't still plenty of people who have kept the old dancing traditions alive, I just wish it were more mainstream. I think we could really benefit from that dose of culture.
In other news, though slightly related, I've found myself very conflicted lately on whether the technology we have now is really helping us to connect with others more easily or if it is in fact doing the opposite and hindering that ability. Personally I've always been EXTREMELY shy when it comes to person to person contact. I always wanted to go talk to certain people, especially cosplayers in my early NDK years, but I never had the guts. I'm not sure what I thought would happen but I guess I assumed that I'd make a complete fool out of myself in front of the people that I so much admired. As years went my I became more comfortable with approaching people for pictures and such but I still couldn't initiate a conversation no matter how simple. Facebook actually helped me with this. At first I felt like a creepy stalker person for friending people I had never actually talked to before but I quickly found that the majority of the cosplay community is extremely nice and easy to befriend. Becoming a more serious cosplayer myself gave me even more of an outlet to meet people like me through cons as well as Facebook (facebook helping through events like meetups and such which gave me the perfect opportunity to talk to people face to face) and now I've made some irreplaceable friends and even gotten to talk to some of the cosplayers that I absolutely idolized at my first few cons.
Now on the downside....I feel like it's harder then ever to meet people outside of large interest groups such as Cosplay. You can't make random friends through sites like Facebook...well I suppose you could try just adding random people but I highly doubt that's ever been very successful for anyone...or safe. Other chat sites and places for people to meet like oh I don't know...MyYearbook or Myspace are really nothing more then a place to put yourself out there and see how many people want to hook up with you or ask to see your boobs.
So how do you meet new people? How do you venture outside your box of friends and find other people in a world where we are all so caught up in online social circles and too afraid of strangers to ever really expose our true natures in public?
Sometimes in my little daydreams I like to imagine a giant power outage and everyone just coming outside in their neighborhoods to talk..even if it's just about what the heck is happening. Of course I do realize that once again that is the glamorized version of a situation who's reality would consist of a lot of theft, mass hysteria, and loss of refrigerated goods....(the worst part of all!)
And since that was a rather depressing and long spiel there I shall try to lighten things up with a picture and perhaps some good natured jargon.
May I have this dance?
