Never before in history of the world has there ever been such access to the sheer amount of people to connect with, as with IRC and the Internet. Normally when one sees things written on the Internet, the focus is usually on the tremendous resources the net creates. While that is certainly true, there are also times when an overwhelm of people occurs as a result.
Picture this:
You have a limited amount of time before you need to be somewhere/do something/meet someone/(fill in the blank) and you pop onto the net to just check your mail. Depending on how involved you are with listserves and personal and professional e-mails, you might have upwards of 20 e-mails to sort through and which to respond, especially if you haven't checked in a few hours.
You do a sort of e-mail triage and try your best to at least reply in a timely manner, let alone in a "terribly witty and insightful way." My gawd, how did the saved e-mail count reach 1723 in the in-box and 2246 in the out-box? You make a mental note to clean up your mailboxes ASAP, which could mean by the time EUDORA has spontaneously combusted with sheer volume or you need to upgrade to a 1.6 gig hard drive. While you are online already, with a full 3-4 minutes before your "something to do", you decide to just pop into IRC to see if "NICK" is there. Your notify scrolls on and you are jazzed to see "NICK" is finally on, because you really need to see him/her.
You /msg Nick something fun/clever/endearing/(_____), or at least "hi" and before you even get a response, 6 other people have /msg'd you. The task now becomes one of attending to all those people, getting your message across to the one person you WANTED to see and doing all this before getting PINGED and inadvertently making someone(s) feel like you are too busy for them. Add in that any or all of these people might be facing life in various crisis stages and could really use some tenderness and support. While this is all going on, 2 other people you haven't seen in a while show up and you also have the task of firmly dealing with various propositions from strangers. This has become exhausting by now and you try to get your message to that one nick and pop off as gracefully as possible before you get flooded with more /msgs.
The odd thing about the net is that this can happen whether you have 3 minutes (HA!) or 3 hours. Not only is it tiring, but it can take some of the fun right out of netplay. This is not a scenario of someone wildly popular either -- a lot depends on the time of day and who happens to be on at the moment. The massive number of people to choose from and who also are choosing you just add up if you are online for any amount of time. I think there is also a danger of a numbing of the "people-senses," when there are so many people involved in one's net life. Details about who lives where or what someone does for a living are often the first to come and the first to go. You might have known someone or several someones for several years and forget that they are a retired policeman for example or that they live in a neighboring state. Sometimes people can even blend all together so that you attribute some action or quality to one, when it really involved another.
I wonder also about the toll it takes on a person to jump from one emotional state to another, e.g. congratulating someone on a new baby, comforting an ill friend, helping someone through a divorce, fending off sexual advances from another or another or another, sharing one's own life struggles and joys. Even the most compassionate and/or codependent people can find themselves using up much of their emotional resources by being supportive to so many friends/acquaintances. While there is something to be said for being needed, if one doesn't have the chance to replenish, it definitely throws the balance off. In talking to a variety of people about this subject, here are just a few strategies for keeping IRC life a bit more contained.
