Recognition is the act of identifying something that you have seen, heard, thought, felt before. In terms of people, it’s about identifying people that we know. We’re used to recognizing people in context. So what happens to our ability to manage recognition when we’re constantly blasting ourselves with bits, bytes, pics and Tweets of information from an expanded network of friends and strangers? Short answer: it gets messy.
Recognition is not absolute truth, and with too much stimulation, we can start to fool ourselves and think we see familiar faces where there aren’t any. Check this tweet from Nancy Galanty after the recent iMedia Breakthrough Summit:
That’s the old model of false recognition: I think I know who you are but I’m wrong. That can lead to an awkward “Sorry, I thought you were someone else”, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad (unless you grab someone inappropriately to greet them!)
Like I said, that’s the OLD model, so there must be a new one. Picture this random encounter at the local coffee shop:
Yikes! That’s not a pleasant encounter from either side, unless Jane is proud of making herself THAT present in the life of a stranger. This may be a bit of an extreme example, but I’m willing to bet that a lot of you have encountered something at least somewhat similar, or have caught yourselves right before you walk up and “pull a Lisa” on someone in your second or third-degree social graph.
As I see it, the problem comes from both frequency and context. I’ve got real friends that I only catch up with a few times a year, but there are strangers that I’m exposed to dozens of times per day, with their name, their photo, their personality and details about their life. What’s more, all of these updates are served up side-by-side with those from my actual friends and colleagues, whether on the Facebook Wall or the Twitter stream. With a little face showing up next to each one, it’s no wonder that the world is starting to look like sea of buddy icons.
Social media overload isn’t going away, it’s going to get progressively more common. We’re finding new ways to expand our sphere of exposure well beyond our own line of sight. People who are essentially complete strangers to us are likely to know more about us than some of our “friends”, a phenomenon previously reserved only for celebrities.
So the next time you see a familiar face when you’re out and about, be prepared to ask yourself: “Do I KNOW him, or do I know ABOUT him?”
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