Offline Lover (Transcript)
Help! My fiancée demands that I show her more attention online.
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2012, at 10:47 AM
Emily: I totally agree. Occasionally, my sister will post something on my Facebook page as, “Oh, I like this or that that you wrote.” I always think since we have the same last name and Yoffe is fairly unusual, people are really going to think this is an objective person liking this. Fortunately, she doesn’t write, “God, I hated that.”
Isn’t the pleasure of these intimate relationships that they just happen in real time, not so exclusively through digital means so you don’t have to be worrying about your Digital Manners – you just have to be worrying about the quality of your face-to-face interactions?
Farhad: Yes, I totally agree with that.
Emily: Our bottom line is she needs to have some friends who comment on how cute her skateboarding cat is, etc. and leave her fiancé alone, especially if she wants to have a long, happy marriage with him.
Farhad: Right. Leave the smushy talk for private time.
Emily: Send us your questions about shifting etiquette in the online age. Our address is digitalmanners@slate.com
Farhad: You can also join our Facebook page where we carry on the conversation throughout the week. Go to www.Facebook.com/digitalmanners.
Emily: And we’ll talk to you next time on Manners for the Digital Age.
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Farhad Manjoo is Slate's technology columnist and the author of True Enough: Learning To Live in a Post-Fact Society. You can email him at farhad.manjoo@slate.com and follow him on Twitter.
Emily Yoffe is a regular Slate contributor. She writes the Dear Prudence and Human Guinea Pig columns. You can send Dear Prudence questions for publication to prudence@slate.com. (Questions may be edited.) Subscribe to Emily Yoffe's Facebook page.