Ezra’s posterous

I try to read their body language and ascertain how they really feel about one another.

Last Friday night, I was invited to a meal at a local hotel. As I was waiting for my hosts to arrive back, I passed my time by observing people enter the hotel from a bird's eye view.

I witnessed two distinct styles of "group-walking": 1) Assumed hierarchy and 2) Active Clique.

Let me explain:

A group of four or more people who do not walk together. They walk in a radius of less that 7 feet, but they will walk staggered enough that, maximum, only two people in the whole group will be walking next to each other. While the one walking two paces faster than everyone else will open the door for the others, do not fool yourselves to think that that they are subservient.

The assumed hierarchy is not because anyone is better than anyone else, rather, everyone is unique and fulfills a different job/station in the micro-society. The various members do not require each other to exist, but will still admit to belonging to this group. A perfect example of such a construct is a family. Teenage children do need their parents, but subconsciously will do whatever they can to separate themselves from the pack. Yet, if grilled about it, they will still answer that they belong to the family, because it is part of their identity.

Upon entering an area with various possibilities for social interaction, the assumed hierarchy will disperse and assimilate within various groups, with the knowledge that at the end of the individual interactions, they will all assemble at a standard location.

The radius of the active clique will be remarkably smaller. They will not walk staggered, rather will rally upon a single point, with every member vying to be close to that point. Incredibly, if one member steps away from the pack for a second, you can see the the rest of the pack gravitate (ever so slightly) after that member, and then the member will assimilate back into the pack.

The pack views itself as equals, with every member being important. It does not see any reason to interact with any other group, rather, interacting as a group with chosen individuals (e.g. family members of one of the members of the pack). 

The obvious question is, how can we translate these findings to online interactions?

If we were to graph acquaintanceship charts, what would we see? 

Would we see mutual follows, with not a lot of interactions between the parties, or would we see mutual follows with a concentrated conversation among a very small cluster of individuals?

Tonight, I hung out with @ahoova (Ahuva Berger), @shiraabel (Shira Abel), @nivcalderon (Niv Calderon), @dvirreznik (Dvir Reznik), and @yaelbeeri (Yael Beeri) at Ahuva's house. I speak with all of these people on a daily basis, whether on twitter, on chat or by phone. 

While a relatively large percentage of my interactions will be part of this group, that number still pales in comparison with my overall interactions. So while I maintain a "clique", I still break away enough to maintain a hierarchical relationship with other members of the online community.
Moreover, when I am at an event with people from outside this "clique", I will check in with the clique, but then we will all spread out, and talk to to different people.

The difference here is that we have a much larger data pool when analyzing all my interactions. When I am watching people, at a specific moment, I am able to figure out who they are with right now. Are they part of a "family" or are they part of a "clique"?

But we all live between the two worlds. We do interact with a small group of people on a regular basis, but the percentage of those interactions becomes normalized over the whole of our interactions.

After we graduate high school (or drop out, like I did), we leave a true clique environment, where we are surrounded by the same individuals for a major (and not only relative) percentage of any day. It takes more complex algorithms, many of which are yet to be written, to ascertain the true social structure of any single individual.

Many of our friends, especially of the social media sort, remain ambient until a stimulus comes to move them. Sure, I may not be one of the "obviously" important sorts, but when push comes to shove, I can get the word out.

The gist of this post is the following:
We must be extremely careful when examining any single social occurrence and extrapolating any usable data from it. Yes, from tonight, you can see that I am friends with Ahuva, Dvir, Yael, Shira and Niv. But you can't possibly know anything else.

The one other thing that you can learn from my outing tonight is that Ahuva can make an amazing soup (but that you should let it cool off a tad before letting a drop drip on your hand), and that Yael can make a kickass gluten free chocolate cake.