The following is from an email from Xavier Holland:
“On an entirely different note, do you have the problem of describing your fellow PIC writers to friends who don't read it? I've definitely had (at least something close to) the following exchange:
“X: Oh, USF is winning. That's cool.
Friend: Why do you care about USF?
X: A guy I know?a friend? an uh coworker? This guy Nathan went there.
Friend: How do you know him?
X: From the internet, I guess.
Friend: I never took you for an online dating person.
X: I never took you for a person that will soon be wheezing on the ground and clutching his stomach. Yet here we are.”
My response:
“Yeah, that's why I try to meet everyone on PIC. Court thinks it's weird that I've spoken with more PICers than he has. E Mike Tuckerson actually showed my mom and sister around New Orleans and calls on holidays. I've partied with Court and Beech and Nick and Mikey and Curtiss. But yeah, it's weird trying to explain how it is working with and actually getting to know people you've never met. Once, when David Nelson called me at work, he told my assistant he was my associate. She didn't believe him at first and she asked me, “Do you know a David Nelson?”
“‘My response: ‘Why? What'd he write?'”
“Her: “Line 1.'”
In the book, Generation X by Douglas Coupland, Coupland refers to the sense of camaraderie that coworkers feel for each other and the resulting relationships as occurring in an Air Family, which I think is a good description of what it's like to have coworkers. After all, the time a group of coworkers spend together is typically similar to the time a family spends together, yet there is no blood involved in an air family, and thus the depth to which we worry or care about them doesn't really amount to much, i.e. air.
So what would you say about an air family that has never met? That's the kind of family we have here at PIC. We hardly know each other, most of us have never actually met, and yet through our writing, we feel we have come to know one another.
But how do we explain this to other people?
Coworker works. Because we work together. Associate? We're definitely associated. Friends? May be pushing it in some cases. May not be. I guess we're all supposed to know who our friends are. Cyber-buddies? Too queer. Internet associate? Sounds like some guy you run a porn site with? E-worker? Better, but still confusing.
You see the problem, here?
So I guess I'm proposing a question here. What should PIC co-workers call themselves?
I vote for Awesome Internet Gimmick Pushers, but that might be too much of a mouthful.