Community/Communication

I'm a big fan of Magic the Gathering. One of the great things about the game is getting together with other people who love the game and spending time together. These days, though, you don't need actual cards to play. You can spend real money on virtual cards that exist only in the aether of the cyber world. And of course, you can play with people from all over the world, but you don't get to Be with them.

The whole YouTube experience has me thinking about what community means to me and how different my definition is as compared to the kids who are living much of their lives on-line. In my world, community means a group of people who support and care for each other, people who really listen to one another and can disagree without getting angry about it. I don't know a lot about the origins of words but it can't be a coincidence that the words COMMUNITY and COMMUNICATE are so similar.

It seems my real life community has gotten smaller and smaller the last several years as everyone I know becomes busier and busier with familial and work obligations. It's the same with almost everyone I talk to. We all feel more and more isolated yet we all find it near impossible to carve out the time required to maintain relationships outside of work and family.

At the same time, almost everyone has email and a Facebook page or a YouTube account. And because we can say a quick hello with these things, we allow ourselves to believe that we're staying connected. On YouTube in particular, there's lots of talk about community, but based on what I observe, the internet definition has to be very different than mine.

Interestingly, I read not too long ago that 70% of human communication is non-verbal. All that body language and pheromones, and tone of voice, and eye movement stuff that signals the actual intent beneath the words (or even without the words). So, I guess my real questions today are-Can there really be such a thing as an old school community in the virtual world as it currently exists? Can we really be part of a working community if our communication is limited to 5-10 word comments about content that we didn't create? Is community really necessary for us to be emotionally healthy beings?