Conversation Vulnerability in (and due to) Online Communication

The article attempts to analyze philosophically the vulnerability of conversation in online communication. The purpose of the article is to analyze the factors that weaken conversation as one of the key genres of communication. The author notes that the effects of online communication mediated in the format of social networks and instant messengers on direct interpersonal connections have not yet been fully studied, as the emphasis is already shifting to a high-tech novelty – neural networks. The role of the smartphone as a key cultural artifact is noted, turning the ‘good old’ social networks into immersive media platforms with functionality that intensifies the process of destruction of the genre of conversation in real time and co-presence. The article posits the thesis that technologically mediated electronic interaction – whether in messengers and social networks or with a neural network – constitutes one of the fundamental communicative mythologemes of the age of universal connectivity. It is substantiated that the activity occurring in all the listed formats is not a conversation, despite the prevailing perception as such. The mythologem is born from a stable feeling of communicative well-being against the background of an increasing number of virtually continuous connections (superficial online communication with its own specifics), while in fact, due to the almost constant technological mediation of interaction, the fullness of the conversation as a communicative act and the fullness of communication in general are truncated. The author reveals the substitution of the corresponding concepts: in the case of a messenger, this is just correspondence, in the case of a social network, correspondence in the context of constructing an identity. As for the interaction with the neural network, carried out through prompts - whether it is communication – is a debatable issue, the author comes to the conclusion that, rather, it is a complex imitation of communication through elements of dialogicity. The study used methods of statistical and structural analysis.