Behind the profile, there is a Thou

When digital life teaches us to know everything about someone without necessarily meeting them

We may know what music they listen to.

Where they were last night.

What they think about a war.

Which restaurant they prefer.

Whom they follow.

What they buy.

Which photographs they like.

What time they go online.

Even how long they spend looking at a piece of content.

Yet there may be one question we cannot answer:

who are they?

Not what their profile says.

Not what they do.

Not what they have posted.

Who they are.

Perhaps one of the most striking contradictions of our age is this: never have we had so much information about other people, yet having information does not in itself mean encountering them.

This is where it becomes worthwhile to go beyond Martin Buber.

Not to explain the difference between I–Thou and I–It once again, as we explored it in the episode of Tra pagine e legami.

But to ask what happens when the world we inhabit constantly encourages us to turn people into something that can be classified.

We need categories

There is a misunderstanding we need to avoid.

We cannot live without categories.

A hospital needs patients.

A school has pupils.

A business has customers.

A newspaper has readers.

A platform has users.

A social network measures followers, views and interactions.

In everyday life, too, we need roles: colleague, teacher, neighbour, professional, customer.

The category itself is not the problem.

The problem begins when the category claims to encompass the whole person.

It is a tiny difference in language and an enormous one in relationships.

Saying:

“They are a customer”

is not quite the same as remembering:

“This person also happens to be my customer at this moment.”

In the first case, the role risks becoming an identity.

In the second, it remains one function within a much larger story.

Algorithms need to simplify

An algorithm could not function if it treated every human being as an irreducible mystery.

It needs to find patterns.

Recognise behaviours.

Create groups.

Calculate probabilities.

Compare what we do today with what we did yesterday.

From its point of view, this makes perfect sense.

The problem arises when we begin to look at people in the same way.

When we say:

“That is just how he is.”

“She always reacts in the same way.”

“They are all the same.”

“I already know what they will say.”

At that point we are no longer encountering someone.

We are encountering the prediction we have formed about them.

Perhaps this is one of the quietest ways in which a relationship ceases to be alive.

The right to surprise us

There is something no profile can ever contain completely: the possibility of change.

Someone may contradict themselves.

They may grow.

They may be afraid.

They may do something we never expected.

They may be different today from who they were five years ago.

They may surprise us.

Perhaps recognising a Thou also means allowing another person the right not to be forever confined by our interpretation of them.

This is particularly difficult in our closest relationships.

With a stranger, we know how little we know.

With someone we have known for twenty years, we may assume we already know everything.

And that is precisely where we can stop truly meeting one another.

Even a photograph can become a verdict

In digital spaces, the phenomenon becomes even more apparent.

We see a photograph.

A sentence.

A comment.

A thirty-second video.

And in no time at all, we construct an entire person.

They are shallow.

They are arrogant.

They are intelligent.

They are ignorant.

They are trustworthy.

They are narcissistic.

They are right-wing.

They are left-wing.

They are one of us.

They are one of them.

From a fragment, we construct an identity.

Then we begin to engage not with that person, but with the identity we have assigned to them.

This is one reason so many online conversations seem never to become genuine encounters.

Two people are not really talking.

Two representations are fighting each other.

Within the relationship

This dynamic does not belong only to social media.

It can enter a couple's relationship.

A family.

A workplace team.

A community.

“You always do this.”

“You never understand.”

“There is no point talking to you.”

These phrases appear merely to describe behaviour.

But they often do something far more powerful:

they close off the possibility that the other person might be different from how we have defined them.

And when we no longer leave room for someone to surprise us, the relationship risks becoming an endless repetition of something we have already decided.

A small experiment

The next time you are about to respond to someone with whom you have a difficult relationship, try something very simple.

Before writing or speaking, finish this sentence in your mind:

“Right now, I am thinking that he or she is…”

Perhaps a word will come to mind:

selfish.

aggressive.

shallow.

unreliable.

cold.

unable to listen.

You do not have to deny what happened.

You do not have to pretend that a particular behaviour did not occur.

Simply add a second sentence:

“This is something I think about them. It is not necessarily everything they are.”

It takes only a few seconds.

But it creates space.

And sometimes that space is precisely where a relationship begins again.

This is also what the techno-relational approach means

When I speak of techno-relational approach, I am not thinking of a kinder technology.

I am thinking of our ability to remain human even while using tools that necessarily turn parts of our experience into numbers, profiles, streams and categories.

The question is not whether we should fight algorithms.

It is how we can avoid becoming algorithms ourselves.

A message can be a relationship.

A video call can be an encounter.

An online community can become a profoundly human space.

And yet we can sit at the same table, look each other in the eye and never truly meet at all.

The difference lies not only in the tool.

It lies in how we look at the person in front of us.

A question to live with

Perhaps the more interesting question, then, is not:

how much do I know about this person?

We could replace it with another:

is there still something about this person that I am willing to discover?

Because as long as the answer is yes, the relationship remains open.

The other person has not yet become merely a photograph.

A role.

A prediction.

A profile.

They remain someone.

They remain a Thou.

A question to live with

Whom might I be failing to encounter in my life because I think I already know who they are?

Perhaps it does not have to begin with a profound conversation.

It may be enough to meet them anew.

Tra pagine e legami

This deeper exploration grows out of the fifth episode of season three of Tra pagine e legami, devoted to Martin Buber and to I and Thou.

The podcast opens a door.

Beyond the episode tries to keep that door open after the audio ends.

🎧 Listen to the episode: “I and Thou – When the other person stops being a thing and becomes someone again”

Open the episode page

Sources and references

Martin Buber, Ich und Du (I and Thou), 1923.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Martin Buber, for an overview of the I–Thou and I–It relationship.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Martin Buber, on dialogical thought and the concept of the “between” in relationships.