By Wendy Sun
There are many reasons why we have trouble maintaining any interactions beyond virtual ones. Virtual interactions offer privacy and distance, real-life interactions do not. Also, the virtual world is between reality and fiction, leaving room for the imagination to flourish and making virtual interactions even more appealing and fascinating than real-life ones. Most importantly, the design of social media exclusively stresses extending our social circles. But “liking” someone’s status or “re-tweeting” about a real-time update will not necessarily make us any closer to a stranger, or even a friend. Our interactions stay on a superficial level and rarely advance. Recently, however, there have appeared other forms of social media with different approaches to connecting people. Dcard is an example. Similar to Facebook, Dcard is a social site aimed to connect university students in Taiwan. D stands for either destiny or dream. The founders of Dcard were inspired by real-life brief encounters that take place every second in the world. Our very destinies might be altered by such short interactions, like a connection built up between two lonely planets. This idea is transformed into a feature of Dcard: you only receive one card about one person per day. A card (that is, the profile of a stranger that contains his or her university and department name, interest, hobbies, hopes for the future, and so on) appears daily at midnight. If you choose to grasp the opportunity and become friends with this stranger by pressing the “become friends” button, you might come across a wonderful surprise. However, if you happen to miss the card or decide not to become friends, you will not come across each other on Dcard again. This adds a sense of realism to social networking, because just like in real life we often don’t come across people we bumped into the day before. Another different feature of Dcard is how we can connect with this stranger after becoming friends. Once you decide to become friends, the only way for you to interact is by sending electronic messages, which cannot be seen publicly. Through this process, a more personal connection is likely to be built up and deepened, and our relationship to each other can advance beyond the status of “he or she is just somebody I know”. Although some of these features may not be as effective as the creators hoped (users can simply stop writing messages or ignore incoming ones, or only become friends with a very limited number of cards), Dcard is already taking an alternative approach when it comes to connecting people. Extending our social circle is still the central idea of Dcard, but the idea is to get to know these people better. Dcard still has its limits and insufficiencies; Mandarin is the only language available, only a few universities are included in the site, we are unable to see the total number of users, the information we provide is too question-answer based, instead of asking us simply to write what we want to share with others. But because Dcard constantly reminds us of the possibility that we may not come across a person again, we may come to cherish the times when a person is introduced to us. After a connection has been built and the messaging starts, the “you’ve got mail!” process begins another journey. This just might become a habit, and lead to a true connection that goes beyond virtual interactions only. From BBS, ICQ to Facebook, social media are constantly transforming, fulfilling more needs and wants, and bringing more fun to users. They penetrate through many parts of our lives and are becoming indispensable. With other social media of distinctive features under progress, Dcard is only one of the many signs of social media’s continuous evolvement. Social media will certainly never seize to improve and amaze us with all of their cool features. But let’s not forget the purpose of social media. Hopefully, someday, we can have the planets staying connected not through on and off signals only, but through actual and frequent visits as well.
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The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
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