Media and the Sense of Shared Experience
There’s something about our experience that defines us. You meet someone new, and if they’ve had the same frustration at the checkout counter at the supermarket, or had the same sense of wonder standing and looking at the wake of a ship stretch to the horizon, a momentary spark forms, and a connection is made. You may know nothing of their values, or their habits, or their dreams, but, in some small but noticeable way, you suddenly share something.
But these connections can now be made in many new ways. Over the phone, over email, even over identi.ca or Twitter or a myriad of other ways to connect over the internet. All of these represent a real shared experience of some sort. But “experience” is a broad concept. For example, the media (the news, the music industry, the movie industry, and the authors and journalists) sell an emotional experience, not just information. Movies (and often music) offer high-powered escapism, a way to journey to a different place and experience emotions that are not part of your normal life. Books are perhaps even more this way, though they vary so much in content that it is hard to generalize (novels certainly are very much like movies, but what about The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People? Hardly escapism…) So, in this realm of mass-published books and broadcast movies and music, suddenly we can get the feeling a shared experience which may not really be shared at all. You might see a movie in a cramped living room on a standard-definition television with 12 friends, and I might have seen it in a high-definition IMAX theater. Not quite shared in the same way we often think of it.
Because of this, even though we may have nothing in common with someone, you might hear them say they saw the same movie as you, or read the same book, or saw the same news article, and suddenly this connection is formed. Your opinions might differ, which can make things awkward, but many times you can find yourself talking with a perfect stranger about their opinions on All The Days Before Tomorrow, thinking that you share something significant because you both saw the film. The funny part is, maybe you do share something significant because of that.
Of course, after this happens some magical number of times, you are no longer perfect strangers, and are instead good friends. Perhaps just because you see the same movies, read the same books, and share your thoughts with one another. Discussion of the faux-shared-experience becomes the genuine shared experience, and the relationship suddenly becomes real. Life is funny that way.
