On Love and the Internet
Originally written for Gulf Life
Rain pounded the car’s windshield on an especially cold night, even for Amman’s blistery winters, and I sank further into the passenger seat, trying and failing to avoid my friend Hal’s onslaught of words.
“Are you crazy?” she raged in frustration, not even waiting for me to respond. “You’re marrying a guy you met online?”
I shrugged, reminding her that I had met her on the Internet, too.
“Not the same thing,” she said, unfazed. “I’m different. And we’re just friends.”
Fast forward three years, and I’m browsing Hal’s wedding website while laughing at the irony of fate. “A long time ago,” read the ‘Our Story’ page. “Mr T poked Hal, in an online, Facebook world. It was instantaneous. Sparks flew left and right. Many months later, on a random night, he asked her to marry him. She said Yes.”
A simple ‘Yes’. Confirm friend. Accept connection. Approve request. Add as friend.
Little magic phrases with the power to completely alter a life, as they did for myself, Hal and multitudes of my friends, who also lead vivaciously wired lives in Arabia.
Maybe it’s the small, real-life communities in the Arab world. Or the often excessive “closedness” of Arab culture. Maybe the novelty of a new medium with a non-existant learning curve is too much to resist. Or it just might be a global trend that is impossible to avoid. Regardless of the reasons, social networks have managed to change the way we communicate, get information and, for the most part, fall in love.
Facebook is my aunt, a digital illiterate who moved straight from thinking that the only use for a personal computer is to play Solitaire, to communicating daily with her son in Saudi Arabia. Twitter is #AmmanTT, a grassroot technology initiative that manages to gather crowds of hundreds by digital word of mouth. YouTube is Mashrou’ Leila, a brilliant Lebanese band that received over 50,000 views through the video-sharing site in a mere, few months. LinkedIn is Mona, who proceeded to dump her old career, pack her bags and move to Dubai after being headhunted on the professional network.
This summer day is surprisingly nice for July in Amman, and my Twitter and Facebook streams are abuzz with conversations, observations and mental wanderings. It may be too early to tell, but mark my words: Social media will one day be heralded as one of the catalysts that changed communication in the Arab world.
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