In the age of high-speed connections and the consequential everlasting presence of a stranger on social media, there seems to be an insatiable need to “add,” “friend,” or “follow.” The stranger you met at orientation and probably will never meet again is now following you on Instagram, the cousin of a friend’s friend is now a connection on LinkedIn, and the chatty friend’s sister’s best friend is now a Facebook friend. With every addition to this online social symposium announcing every worthy achievement, it’s like a falsely exclusive invitation to peer into the lives of people I once knew way back when and people I will never know.
I don’t mind the influx of information; in fact, I am too damn nosy to not know. The real eyebrow-raiser that people never cease to question is my quirk of never saving phone numbers, despite being active on social media. If one were to browse through my contacts, there would only be a handful of numbers besides the must-have family phone numbers. This is not to say that I only contact those in my address book; if one were to browse my texts, it’ll look a lot like an assortment of random area codes followed by the number line.
Why must I make my life hard to decode? Well, besides being up for a mental memory challenge every time I read a text, it’s my last meager attempt at privacy. When my phone falls into the wrong hands, the only information available will be the contacts who can actually reach me. If I’m ever injured or ill, the people that need to be reached can be easily found. If I accidentally butt dial someone, I wouldn’t need to go through an awkward conversation explaining why I called out of the blue.
Saving a phone number in my contacts means I am willing to call you up in the middle of the night and ask you how you’re doing. It means I don’t need to scroll through hundreds of strangers’ numbers to realize I can’t call any of them for the fear of stepping out of line in this social norm of wondering, but never contacting. It means that a real conversation about goals and aspirations instead of small talk about the busy life. It means an exclusive peer into the flip side of your life not tweeted, posted, or shared about in the online social sphere of connections.
