The Best Friend Effect

One of the side effects of spending hours in a small dark room editing a project (apart from junk food diets, expanding waistlines and vitamin D deficiency) is that after a couple of days I develop a serious empathy with the people in the story. It's like they're life-long friends.

This can lead to some embarrassing situations. I remember that soon after finishing one project I met up with one of the participants and immediately greeted her with "I've just been staring at your ugly face for hours on end." Now, that might be okay with a friend but with a stranger it's pretty confronting. She just stared at me and it took me a moment to make the realisation that while I had thirty hours of 'experience' with her, she only had one hour with me. Fortunately, after I explained she joined in the joke too.

The reason I'm bringing this up is because tonight I'm joining a blog meetup. About six weeks ago we did a story on them and while I finished editing it several weeks ago the best friend effect remains. The reason for that is that while I was editing the story I was also reading their blogs. For the story I mean =). Even after the editing process was completed I found myself returning to them. Most I continue to read daily. So, in a sense I've got a double dose of pseudo-friendship. I know these people. Their mannerisms and body language, as well as their thoughts and beliefs. As a result, I fully expect to make a fool of myself tonight.