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As a pre-boomer well over 40, two recent articles posted on
this site struck home and seem related.
Jack Loechner’s “Boomers Are Not Bloggers” and David Carr’s “Hey, Friend,
Do I Know You?” brought to mind the importance of (no I’m not
kidding) the olfactory sense in human relationships. It occurs to me that MySpace, Facebook and
all their online cousins lack a key element in Social Networking: the sense of smell.
Scientists are forever saying how important smell is to how
humans respond to each other. This is
not news—it’s been around since we developed noses. So when was the last time you smelled a blog?
I think of a young physician I know who thought she was
prepared for her stint of charitable clinic work in Haiti. She had read extensively, watched videos and
listened to lectures in advance of her trip.
But she was totally unprepared for her initial, overwhelming experience
as she deplaned in Port au Prince: the smell of poverty.
On the positive side, my four young grandchildren have
consistently, with no prompting, said, “I love the way you smell” (total credit to Clinique’s “Happy” scent, and this is not a product promotion).
So it’s just possible that we over-40 folks are
habitually wed to the full experience of friendship. We may not be conscious of it, but human
animals that we are, it could be we simply like to breathe in and smell the
people we call friends.
I’m not an enemy of Social Networking—clearly it’s here to
stay and serves a purpose for users. But
it does concern me to some extent. If
you’ve ever known anyone who has permanently lost their sense of smell due to
illness or old age, you know it is a very great loss in the quality of their
lives.
So what are we losing, if like David Carr, we’re all too
busy to personally speak with—and sniff—our friends?
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