Digital détente

My 20-something friend (let's call her Jayne) has quite a temper. The term "feisty" comes to mind. She's articulate, she's gutsy, and she rarely bites her tongue.

So, yes, she's a born blogger.

For the past week or so I've been following her blog posts about the new upstairs neighbor in her apartment building. The woman's noisy, and has two very noisy accoutrements: an African djembe drum and new and enthusiastic boyfriend — both of which she likes playing with late at night and early in the morning.

The racket is driving Jayne nuts. And Jayne is a girl who values her beauty sleep.

The apartment building in question is just a few blocks from my office, and I actually started listening for sirens after Jayne's post in which she informed us she was going upstairs to confront the Loud Lady. (She'd already left a scathing, but apparently ineffective, note earlier in the week.)

What does this juicy story have to do with online social networking? Bear with me.

It turns out that Jayne never went upstairs, but the noise has mysteriously stopped. Jayne now suspects that the Loud Lady came across Jayne's blog (which isn't hard to find if you know her name). And, it gets better. Jayne Googled the Loud Lady and  found a MySpace page. It revealed so many details of the Loud Lady's personal life that resonate with Jayne (I suspect a recently breakup of a long-term relationship is one of the shared elements) that Jayne's now willing to cut the Loud Lady quite a bit of slack.

So, without exchanging a word, these two have apparently reached digital détente. Surely somebody out there is writing a sitcom and can use this script? Contact me if  you want me to send you along to Jayne. She never disappoints.