Best, Robin

Human beings need to become more humanistic. It sounds weird but it’s absolutely true, above all regarding internet interaction. But there are some people that want to change this destructive trend.

Thanks Robin for the reminder.

Regards.

I appreciate your feedback – glad you liked the illo

Best, Robin

Great input into the conversation. Wise input. Sure, whether to project as a human or automaton is a personal choice irrespective of medium. Your examples are excellent.

Thanks for your input and support – it’s wild, original, honest and stimulating.

Shine on, Alex.

Robin

There is a genuineness and personal touch throughout your communication that I really relate to. Thank-you.

Best to you, Robin

But as you say, if the relationship is to progress, it can’t just stay at the level of ‘tweet-to-tweet’. For the next step, I like skype, and if it’s possible, face-to-face.

Great to connect with you Brad, and I’m looking forward to our first skype conversation next week.

Best, Robin

You use Twitter really well – a great mix of connection with your blog, and connection with your life. I like that. It’s real and authentic. And there’s a consistency between your blog posts and your tweets that many others don’t seem to achieve.

Thanks for your generous input. I value it enormously.

Robin

Thank-you for your generous comment. I really value your support and feedback. Regarding Twitter as a relationship-building tool, my experience is as follows:

a) I’m definitely using Twitter as a relationship-building tool, so your question is very relevant to me. I want to connect and relate to a limited number of great people;

b) I’ve only been using it for a few months and have made many mistakes, so I’m no expert;

c) only relatively recently has anyone been responding to my questions and comments. For a long time (3-4 months, I struggled to build any kind of dialogue). Most of my thoughts were completely ignored;

d) Things changed when I stopped treating Twitter as something different from any other form of communication. Initially, I was intimidated by it and it hampered my usual ‘Robin Dickinson’ style of communication.

How I use it now is much more in keeping with my normal style of communication – challenging, passionate, encouraging and lifting.

This has allowed ‘the real me’ to shine through more authentically, and in turn, this has helped me connect with others. That’s how you and I met!

I’ve now met a wonderful group of people through Twitter and look forward to building relationships with them and meeting many more.

I’m not sure if any of this helps you Marilyn, but the very fact that you and I connected via Twitter is enough for me to say keep doing whatever it is you are doing.

Be brave. Be true to yourself. Connect on Twitter the way you would in any other medium. Give it a bit of time and I think some amazing things will happen.

Best to you, Robin

@Annabel I agree, the automated tweets and DMs are annoying. I think I need to clean up on my following list a bit. Thank you.

such a thought-provoking topic.

really like the idea of coffee meetings with like-minded peeps. too bad i live on the southern tip of africa haha

man. more i think about it, more i see these distinctions of “humanness” and “devoid of humanness” as being self-imposed and generalised.

the more i think about it, the more it comes down to the person and not the medium.

most guys. not even just a few – the geeky warcraft cave dwelling leer chodes. naw. most guys are devoid of humanness in their real life interactions. they’re insincere and forced and generic and inexpressive. that’s the same thing. just because the person is standing in front of you doesn’t mean that the human element is there.

converseley; just because a person isn’t in front of you – on the internet – duddn’t mean there can’t be an element of humanity. it just depends on the way you express yourself and how much you’re trying to limit and protect your little ego.

hmmm

awwwsomeness.

really loving your site all round. really honest raw undiluted glorious content.

keep well and in touch mate
alex – unleash reality

In the online world its so easy to get into the habit of automating responses, Actually its kind of easy to do the same in the real world.

I try to humanize my approach by responding to each situation how I feel is required rather then respond based on past experiences. Each situation is different and because of that there is something new to learn and new to give each time.

Keep being awesome Robin.

Thanks for the post.

Selma.

I can relate to the problems and frustrations Annabel and Marilyn describe. It can be depressing to speak into a void or to be spoken to by robots. All I can say is, I’ve been doing this for several years and I’d put up with all the non-response and spam all over again if I could come out of it with my same small group of friends. In the real world, have to make hundreds of cold calls to wind up with one valued customer. You put up with a lot of discomfort and strained conversations along the way. In that respect, the real world and the digital world have a lot in common.

To answer your question: What are examples of dehumanized approaches to communication and relationship building that you have noticed?

It’s so annoying to be followed by robots who you realise have followed you because they are programmed to follow anyone who tweets a certain word. In my early Twitter days I advised one fellow Twitterer to stop tweeting 10 times in a row and eventually he DMed me, apologised, and explained it was all automated. Another wake up call:)Automated? What’s the point in that?

And those “Thanks for following me I look forward to connecting” messages are annoying now too… they end up straight in the bin. I always @ someone who looks interesting and say I like this that or the other.

But that’s it, just little old me tweeting my ups and downs and trying to raise a smile where I can. There are a lot of genuine people out there and it’s great to be able to connect with them in this way so overall I can’t complain and am definitely a Twitter touter!