Consequential strangers matter. We don’t always pay attention to the cumulative effects of a warm hello, help with a package, a bit of information. But when someone you once took for granted is no longer there–you realize how those, brief, subtle, everyday interactions add up. Manhattan psychologist Mindy Greenberg wrote about such a realization in her must-read piece, My Building’s Protocol, Altered in a Flash. Continue Reading »
My confession about falling down the “rabbit hole” of social media–The Audacity of Hype–is this week’s “Soapbox” essay in Publisher’s Weekly. The piece has garnered quite a few comments. One tweeter described it as: “Moving account of hopes/fears of writer plugging her book on social media (Consequential Strangers).” I’ve also received several emails and Facebook messages and questions from other writers. And PW printed a letter from someone in the real estate business for whom the piece also resonated:
I thought I was a Real Estate Broker, but the last few years it’s been all about desk top publishing/marketing and advertising via social networking. Makes “hauling & hoping” not look so bad after all!
This must happen all the time to bloggers: Earlier today, 
I intended to write about other connections I’d made through social media over the last many months (see What CS Taught Me). But once Jason Simon (right) popped into my head, I went to his blog, where I found it far more interesting to respond to his question, What is your dream? Continue Reading »
Later today, I’m at the 92nd Street Y’s Tribeca facility. In New York, half the population lives alone and yet New Yorkers rank far lower than their country cousins on scales of loneliness. Why? They cultivate–and value–their CS. These are the points I’m going to make: Continue Reading »
Guy Owens and I are very distantly related–he’s the husband of my ex-husband’s first cousin! Our paths would have never crossed but for the fact that I still spend most holiday’s with my ex’s family–two children, three grandchildren and many years later, my ex and I and our extended family comprise a “family apart.” That’s how Guy and I met, and now we’re consequential strangers who see each other at family events–proof of why it’s so hard to categorize relationships as “intimate” or “non-intimate.” I prefer to think about my various connections, family or not, close or casual, in terms of “meaningful” (instead of intimate), in which case all relationships matter. Guy sent this in an email and allowed me to post it in CS Stories. Continue Reading »
I’m no early adapter, but gradually I’m learning my way around the social web. Thanks to Google Alerts, I’ve made a lot of new connections–people far and wide whom I see as my teachers. They live in other places, deal with different challenges and have their own unique way of facing them, and each one broadened my own perspective. Here are a few that come to mind. I’ll keep featuring these connections here as I continue to meet and make new CS. Continue Reading »
If anyone out there knows Susan Dominus, please introduce us. Her stories invariably revolve around key concepts covered in Consequential Strangers. My neighbor Joan, on whom I can always rely to clip stories about consequential strangers, had saved Dominus’s piece, Happy Times at the Dog Run, Now Coming to an End (New York Times, November 7, 2009). It centered on Dick Sebastian, a surgeon-turned-dog-portraitist who, with his wife Susie, had become part of a community of dog owners’ in Washington Square Park. (It sounded a lot like “the path,” where I walk my dog in Northampton, Massachusetts.) Continue Reading »
Karen L. Fingerman, my academic collaborator, and Calvin Morrill, one of the scholars whose work also contributed greatly to the foundation of Consequential Strangers, are quoted today in a New York Times article, Window Watchers in a City of Strangers. The article makes the point that we have always been fascinated by other people’s life–a preoccupation captured in Hitchcock’s Rear Window and more recently in project by Gail Albert Halaban, a fine art photographer who created Out My Window NYC. As Ms. Halaban put it:
“In a large city where there’s a lot going on around you, it can feel very isolating and lonely. By having contact with these total strangers through the window, it’s a safe way of having a relationship without the hard part of a relationship.” Continue Reading »
In ancient cultures, according to sociologist Lyn H. Lofland, strangers were routinely viewed with suspicion–in the extreme executed for the “crime” of being unknown. Parisians, it seems, haven’t come far since then. They are excessively polite, but they aren’t interes
ted in outsiders. I didn’t want to believe that–but my stay last Christmas certainly reinforced the stereotype. I couldn’t wait to leave and did so after sixteen days, muttering under my breath, They’re right about the French.
I was determined that this trip would be different. Haven’t I written advice about raising your social IQ? I can’t say I’ve been totally successful in breaking through the French resolve, but people do seem “nicer” now And since they probably haven’t changed, I must be doing something different. Here’s what I’ve learned:
Bring a dog with you. This is the only guarantee of starting a conversation with a stranger. In fact, I’ve learned to let my six-pound poodle walk in first. If all of Paris is Studio 54, Bogey is on “the list,” not me. Seeing him, every waiter, every shopkeeper brightens and coos, “Ooooh. Qu’est-ce qu’il est mignon! [Isn't he sweet?] Entrez! Entrez!” and then finally looks in my direction, tolerating the human. In Paris, dogs rule–even visiting dogs sense it. Bogey trots down the street here as if he’s returned to his homeland.
Speak their language. I’m relying on my meager and long forgotten high school French, but it helps to at least try. Then again, my word retrieval is poor, my grammar poorer. I know how David Sedaris felt when he wrote about his struggle to master even rudimentary French in Me Talk Pretty One Day. Case in point, yesterday when I accidentally bumped into someone on the street–”bumped into” as in “collided with,” not “ran into an old acquaintance”–I put on my most contrite face and blurted out, “I’m sorry to me.” Or at least I think that’s what “Je me desoler” means! Continue Reading »
Inc. magazine online is asking readers to chose their favorite from their “30 under 30” honorees whom the editors describe as “America’s coolest young entrepreneurs.” A teaser to the article, “For Young Entrepreneurs, Safety in Numbers,” which describes the willingness of this new generation of business leaders to look beyond the walls of a traditional company, says it all:
Despite the economic gloom and doom, the honorees on this year’s 30 Under 30 list are building wildly successful ventures with the help of their peers, parents, professors, and patrons. Why enlisting these loyal tribes of support has become so important in the start-up world — and how the smartest companies foster that same loyalty among their customers.”
The honorees are the vanguard of the Millennial Generation (those born between 1982 and 2005), and as you can read in this excerpt from Chapter 7, they were born to connect. They intuitively know the importance of consequential strangers, and they can teach the rest of us a thing or two about collaboration and connecting across traditional boundaries. My vote went to Pete Cashmore, the 23-year-old founder of the website Mashable.com–which provides one-stop shopping for advice about using social media, as an individual, a business, or to promote a cause. Last year when this old dog set out to learn some new tricks, fortunately someone recommended the site, which has been an invaluable resource, praised by experts as well as newbies like me. I didn’t know most of the honorees, but reading about them gave me hope!
