When browsing Mashable, I stumbled on “The Forgiveness Engine”. According to theforgivenessengine.com, the site is intended to be a place to make amends.
The way it works is this: you log in with a twitter account and write your story (what you forgive/apologize for) and it simply tweets that you forgave or that you asked for forgiveness. The specifics are not tweeted, but are saved to the site and you are then free to scroll through their list of stories. The official rules are: “Say what you have to say, make it sweet. No names, and when you save your story, we update your status for you.”
If you find an apology and a forgiveness that are similar, you have the option to “match” them (for example, “I apologize for using my roommate’s soap” and “I forgive my roommate for using my soap” = match!). The two are alerted of the match, and have the opportunity to connect at that point. Mashable’s article interviews the developer, Jasper Sparre Andersen, who suggests that the matching option can provide empathy and support to those experiencing similar situations, as the opposing viewpoint gives a different understanding of the same issue. (The matching function is not yet up and running.)
Andersen also recently launched Avoidr. The Foursquare plugin helps to avoid running into people such as exes and “ex-friends” by labeling who to “avoid” or finding places to avoid, based on where those people are.
But with all of this technology, are we just avoiding unpleasant conversations/confrontations because it’s the easy thing to do, or is it “the way of the future”? The Forgiveness Engine might be a good way to connect with others in the same situation, but in the end it doesn’t let the person know that you’re sorry or that you accept an apology. Avoiding conversations and accidental run-ins seems like it only delays the inevitable, making it even more awkward and uncomfortable when it happens sometime in the future.
What do you all think?
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1 comment:
A huge way that social media has complicated relationships is also the relationship profile on Facebook. I recently helped a friend who was struggling with how to accept a request to be "in a relationship" with her new boyfriend without advertising it to many of her other friends who she hadn't yet told in person. She didn't want to offend her close friends -- but worse, she didn't want to deal with the dozens of "OMG! Who is he??" comments that would inevitably come along with it. After half an hour of messing with privacy settings, we finally figured out how to accept the request without announcing it to friends.
Which begs the question: Thanks to social media, are we now obligated to announce all our personal life changes to everyone we know, including people we met on a train once 3 years ago? There is a remarkably low bar for what constitutes Facebook friendship, but we all seem comfortable over-sharing our lives with each and every one of them.
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