I also call it the Facebook Effect.Social networking is all the rage now. Bloggers are getting their faux friendship fix on Facebook, and the blogs are drying up. Twitter is the big thing -- next year I'm hoping it will be last year's big thing -- such that idiot twittering congressmen made the news at the Inauguration, every celebrity has a flunky managing his tweet equity, and even news radio takes it as having a given value. Capital Public Radio (local NPR affiliate) ran a piece this morning about the attorney general or state comptroller or some such official, and closed their report by saying, "And, he tweets!"
Fuck.
(By tweet equity I mean something akin to brand equity. I take that as being self-explanatory.)
Fuck, again. Tell you what: I'm going to knock down all the cell phone towers and crash all the Wi-Fi networks just to watch you people squirm. Fair enough?
I guess the final straw for me is when bloggers blog about twittering. I mean, I understand using a fake interaction medium such as this to write about real stuff (family, writing, photography, life), or about unreal stuff (politics), or about virtual stuff (other blogs). But when we blog about tweeting or tweet about blogging the overload of fakeness, the confluence and merging of twin rivers of nothingness, it just kills me. Reminds me of that Dilbert cartoon when he was reading -- reading the manual for his new computer golf game -- reading a description of a pretend version of an activity that is almost a sport. I dunno. It's like drinking non-alcohol lite beer to me, only much worse.
So. I tried Twitter for a couple weeks and then killed my account. I do Facebook because it's easy and there are non-bloggers there and, like I said, it's the current place for our faux friendship fix. I blog less but not just because of Facebook, I really am online less, or I'm a lot less interactive anyway. I'm actually online a lot thanks to this crazy job.
Segue!
Crazy online job right now! I am out on the porch swing, in darkness save for the glow of the LCD screen. A headset blares into my right ear, attached to my cell phone, through which I reached a local number that patches me into a meeting taking place in several geographies. Microsoft® Office Live Meeting fills my screen with presentations and notes, and minutes being typed by a team lead in Bangalore, talking to folks in Shanghai and in California, on subject matters far beyond my ken. I'm here to absorb it, a bench player, except I don't get the game. They're talking software stuff. I grok software to an extent -- I got my fucking Master's in it -- but really I hate the shit and besides, this isn't about development or anything cool and creative. It's all about some very involved and extraordinarily boring coordination of drivers, fixes, patches, and the schedules for validation and release of same.
I'd almost rather live in poverty. The Padre seems happy enough.
(You know who I mean, or you don't.)
This whole online almost-friends thing started for me in Usenet. No, it started in dialing up local BBSs. No, online debates started there. Then moved to Usenet where I got to know real people, many of whom are truly the cat's pajamas. Friends, okay, but we never met. And then I found the interaction took way too much time and energy. Quit Usenet completely. Should say I've been backing out ever since but no, blogs had (still have) potential for some great creative expression and interaction. Some blogs express genius at that. Wanted for awhile to pull something genius off too, but the focus / energy aren't there. So, you get this. And posts and traffic are backing off. Like I said, a healthy trend.
There's a cat rubbing against my legs.
12 comments:
Twitter's kind of like having your IM on all day, but you aren't obligated to respond. I find I like that aspect. Peeps I like say things throughout the day, some of them quite funny (not me, I don't know how to be funny, though I laugh a lot) which is cool, and if I want, I can respond, but if I don't want, nobody feels slighted because no one is really talking to any one in particular.
There really isn't any point to getting down on any of these things. Sure they go through a fad phase which can be annoying, but they can be useful, too, and it just depends upon how you want to use them. If you were to follow through on your threat of knocking everyone offline, we'd just find something else inane to do. Whaddya gonna do? Change human nature? ;-)
I find it interesting that you use words like "faux" and "fake" so many times in this post to describe things people do online. Why is this - whether "this" be inane chit-chat or serious discourse - any less real than if you were doing it at a cocktail party?
Do you suspect we're all just figments of your imagination, Mr. Descartes?
I sorta agree and sorta not. I Tweet with peeps I "know" online and consider friends, such as S. When she tweets about her daughters or hubby, I know who she's talking about; I click on her photos sometimes. What totally baffles me is following Tweeters you don't know. WTF is the point of that? Following 100s of 'em? Celebs? Politicians? People who'd never read YOUR tweets? Do not get it. And then, worst of fucking all, RETWEETING THAT SHIT!!! Argh.
I am tired of most of FB though. It was lots of fun while I was into it, but bleh. I skim through the updates and make an occasional comment, but don't update my status much now and don't do the games and quizzes. Maybe I'll restart, but I doubt it.
I'm actually hopeful that in the near future I will be doing more things in meatspace with people in real time. Kinda weird, huh?
Pretty conflicted, aren't I. And there are lots of converging reasons why, all to do with me. Me me me! If I weren't a) weirdly reluctant to deal with people in real time face to face and b) not so easily distracted then c) these safe online interactions wouldn't be such an issue. But is what is. We need a Wrevel.
I guess the final straw for me is when bloggers blog about twittering.I trust I don't have to put lots of little irony-stars around this statement for you to get the message.
I'd say if you hate Twitter, don't tweet. Why would it bother you that other people do?
safe online interactions ---
Whereas it would never cross my mind to conceal my identity from someone in the grocery store, but I'm convinced there are stalkers stalkingly stalking around every corner of the net...
By "safe" I mean not fraught with all the weird fear that oppresses people like me when faced with facing real people. I'm not afraid of stalkers or muggers or terrorists. But dealing with people face to face has always been difficult. It's why I'm so very successful in the corporate world, have countless friends, and would never find the incredible ease of online interaction to be so very suspect. And see, I express my suspicion because I know that, so far as having the potential of using online interactions to hide from real ones, I'm not the only one.
Why would it bother you that other people do?No more than that people watch American Idol. I'm only making public my private reactions.
Why is this - whether "this" be inane chit-chat or serious discourse - any less real than if you were doing it at a cocktail party?It's a lot less real because it is not face to face. Here in our individual bubbles we can be and say whatever and the consequences are largely nil or can be rendered so. We fool ourselves into thinking we are in the world when in fact we are still in our heads. At a social event otoh we need to respond in real time, no googling for wisdom, manage our facial expressions and body language, react and interact politely to others, look people in the eye, smile but not leer, avoid the temptation to put their cigarettes out in their drinks, maintain posture, not pick noses (not even our own), feign interest, put time limits on talking to hotties, and on and on and on. More to the point, face to face we take risks when meeting people, whereas online we do not. If you've never been shy then this probably looks like nonsense, but the not-shy people I know are seriously derogatory towards online socializing anyway. And now you can see my conflict arises from the fact that I hate being shy, and am uncomfortable allowing myself to so easily get away with it. What the rest of you do is not at issue, please believe me.
When did blogger stop recognizing line feeds after italics? I'm going to
run an experiment
and see what haps.
The whole thing is annoying. From the first instant I typed a message into some idiot's BBS (1990) to now, I have given my actual name and engaged in paper correspondence with exactly one human being whom I met online--one. And that person I have never even met, or even talked to on the phone.
I have ulterior motives for it all, and always did--I just wanted to write well, and I wanted to improve at it by constant practice. But as to all this stuff about flattening the world and a new age of human interaction, I'd rather be running around the block.
Archer rules the world.
And, Don, you know this is one of my favorite topics. Not sure how I missed this post of yours, though. D'oh!
My favorite thing about your perspective is how totally conflicted you always seem. So hard on yourself but still seeing the upside...
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