Usually, I like to weigh my words carefully. In everyday life, I tend to be fairly deliberate — unless I am anxious or feeling completely at ease in a group, in which case I can situationally turn into quite a chatterbox.
Here on the blog, too, I think carefully about what I write. You sort out your thoughts, finally hit “Publish,” lean back, and for a brief moment imagine you have just had a good conversation.
Right there is where you fool yourself.
As a software developer, this often reminds me of the difference between two network protocols: UDP and TCP. With UDP, a computer simply fires its data packets blindly out into the network — without a prior greeting and without a delivery confirmation. The sender happily keeps running, having no idea whether anyone is even listening on the other side, whether the line is dead, or whether the packet was discarded along the way.
Writing onto the web basically follows that exact UDP principle. No matter how carefully I choose my words, I have no idea where and how you are reading them right now. Maybe you are sitting there relaxed with a cup of coffee. Or maybe you are currently up to your neck in the “hole” yourself, feeling raw, and a sentence that sounded completely calm and clear to me hits you like a blow to the head. And my screen? It just stares back in silence. Resonance is missing.
Likes, view counts, or quick comments do little to change that. A thumbs-up does not tell me what a thought stirred in you. And when someone rants angrily beneath a post online, they are usually not talking with me at all, just fighting a trigger word inside their own head.
How different it is when we sit across from each other in real life.
A real conversation — at the kitchen table, on a bench in the square, or in a support group — works like TCP: before things even really begin, there is a genuine handshake. A look, a nod, a brief sensing: Are you there? Yes, I hear you. And while you are speaking, the resonance is in the room immediately — often before the sentence has even been finished.
I see your eyes. I can tell by your posture, your breathing, or a nod that comes too quickly whether you are still with me or have already shut down inside. When I start talking too much again out of insecurity or sheer comfort, strike the wrong tone, or unintentionally hit a sore spot, it hangs palpably in the air between us at that very moment.
And that is the exact gift of real life: I can slow down. I can keep quiet, listen, ask: “Hey, how did that just land with you?” We can straighten out a misunderstanding, laugh together, or simply sit in silence next to each other for a minute.
Why, then, do I keep writing here anyway?
Because writing helps me work on myself: you have to look much more closely than when you just briefly think about a topic. And it helps me recalibrate my own compass again and again when I re-read my own texts later. If every now and then someone else also catches a data packet that does them some good for their day, I am glad.
But this blog is no substitute for life out there. A text on the internet always remains only half a conversation. Text and video conversations can never replace real-life contact.
Do you also miss the resonance on the internet? Or the sparked imagination of a good book?
By René Jochum - LLM Translated. License: CC-BY-4.0.