Socially Disconnected

I was attempting to watch Jimmy Fallon at home to observe how the experience of the late-night TV show would hold up without an audience. I was also looking to get some inspiration for how I could arrange my video interviews. Have any of you watched an episode? Maybe it was just the episode I watched, so I don’t want to be too judgy about it, but this particular episode had me cringing. His jokes were awkward without an audience to laugh or feed off of. It wasn’t the weirdly funny awkwardness of The Office tv series, but more of a pitiful awkwardness like a poor performance at America’s Got Talent. 

It got me thinking about how audiences aren’t just accessories—they are connection points. Having people gathered together brings a desire out of us to communicate or perform in a way that garners their support. If it’s a positive experience, you begin to feel that around you. When that chemistry is there, it brings a certain energy into the place that acts like a magnet for everyone who gets close to the action. It’s hard for a person, no matter how charismatic they are, to be by themselves and create the same type of atmosphere that gets produced by groups of invigorated people. 

Now think about how that plays out when we attempt to live out our lives without considering our connection points or support systems. When we are miles away from feedback, we sometimes do the most cringy things. When we aren’t having people hear what we are thinking or seeing their faces when we’re acting out some kind of behavior, we can be easily deceived that we are doing it well. We can be deceived into thinking we are more entertaining than we really are, more rational than we really are, more skilled than we really are, or doing more good than we really are. It’s pretty bad when we don’t have people around. 

I know we are living in a time where we are forced to keep our distance, but there are ways around that, right? When something is important to us, we will find a way to make it happen. Whether that is going through a back alley to get a haircut or getting on the Hangout app or a Zoom account to see people’s faces to schedule time to meet together.

The episodes of our lives are being played out every day. We need an audience of people around us who care about what is happening as each episode takes place. If those people are not laughing at what we think is funny it might be because it’s not funny to watch you live that way. If those people are not clapping at what we think is a great accomplishment it might be because you’re not really accomplishing anything that brings any value to yourself or others. You won’t be able to tell much without an audience around you. Social distancing shouldn’t lead us into social disconnections, and if it does, we will know because whenever we do happen to take a glimpse back at our life decisions during those times it will make us cringe.