“i am neurotic.”: Social Therapy and Virtual Healing
i am neurotic questions the normal divide between the personal and the private realms of life in an interesting way. Here people post their compulsions, fears, and neuroses for the whole world to see, rate, and comment on. They do this anonymously, but the fascinating thing is that the comments are done through Disqus, which means that while the trigger for the discussion (the original post detailing the neurosis) is anonymous, the conversation that arises around it is not.
One of the foundational ideas of modern society is the “public vs. private” divide. It is a basic principle in both our political and our social systems. When we were children, our parents taught us that some behavior and subjects of conversation that were just fine in your own home were unacceptable in public, and the law works the same way in western-style democracies.
By itself, this is interesting because our ethics usually don’t make such a distinction. Something is wrong or right based on some other reason than simple location. But in some cases it’s simply true. Some behaviors are out of bounds.
This is true online as well. Trolls (we don’t mean you Igor!), flamers, script-kiddies, and bottom-feeders of all sorts are simply not accepted. But in the physical world we have some stigmas that don’t exist online, such as those involving age, race, and illness. This is because online our touchpoints are different. In physical space, our touchpoints are physical and local, while in the virtual space they are based on interests and abilities.
This means that some things we just “don’t talk about” in public in the physical realm are fair game online, like mental illness. People who normally exist in a very isolated way are able to come together online in various ways through social media and web 2.0 technologies.
I find this site fascinating because this divide is being questioned in such a way. For most of human history, mental illness in any form was an extremely isolating affair. To be mad was also to be alone. But social media has breached that isolation for the first time, making madness public and the mad a community.
So people post their problem, then others who are not anonymous come together and work through it. The original poster can be a part of this, or not, but the important fact is that mental illness is being acknowledged discussed publicly out here, instead of behind the closed doors of therapy. Anyone can be involved, rather than a select few.
Now, to me this seems to reveal a basic fact: our divide about public and private is arbitrary. It was a game that was made up to make a certain kind of life more manageable. That kind of life is becoming obsolete, and so the public and private divide is becoming obsolete with it.
What do you all think about this?
- Is there really a “public vs. private” divide? Is it real or just made up and then enforced?
- Does social media shift this divide or dissolve it altogether?
- What do you think about i am neurotic.? A new form of therapy? A new form of illness? Interesting? Stupid? Wrong? Why?