750 Words Sunday, 17 July 2011

So, social media huh.

Facebook;

When it first came around I saw it for what it was, shit. I place where you can reconnect with people you’ve tried your best to forget for that last 15 years. How wonderful it is to reconnect. But as everyone was using it I figured I must be seeing it wrong or that I was missing something, either way I figured I just sign up and see what I was missing. As it turns out I wasn’t missing much, except the time I lost while using it, time that as Einstein taught us I can’t get back. No fair. I’d sit at work on the week ends and sign in and sit in there all freaking day, going through the features until I was bored of them. Then once I was home I’d do the same. A life of Facebook is a sad state of affairs. South Park has it right, it palls you in and takes over your life and personality and it truly becomes your social life. Unless of course you actually have a normal social life and only use Facebook for what is, a place to interact with friends, share photos and videos. Lots of people allow Facebook to become their identity, and Facebook doesn’t help any. Where you can use Facebook to sign into other sites at that point Facebook becomes who you are. NEVER LET THIS HAPPEN.

I can’t even remember when I joined Facebook, not that I’m interested in finding out though, and in those years of Facebook Social No-Life I’ve grown to use facebook for what it should be used for. I log in and check the newsfeed, the first page that comes up on my computer by the way, I scroll down a little bit looking for something interesting that a friend might be up to, if I see something I like I check it out, and comment if I feel the need to. Then I’m outta there. It usually takes all of 5 minutes.

So facebook for me is what facebook started out as. I place where I can simply check out what people are up to. And that my first impression of facebook was bang on. I was right, I feel for it and stumbled down its rabbit hole got caught up in its mad hatter bullshit, but was able to claw my way out to see it facebook for what it is. Not a social network. More of an address book with pictures.

Twitter;

I joined in September 2008. Way before there where even 2 million users. And last night the 200th million user joined, awesome. Now I like Twitter always have, because to me Twitter is what it is and when you can only use 140 characters at a time you can’t make to much of Twitter. Of course you can sign into other sites with your twitter account, but I only do that if its something like TwitPic, a site that is directly linked to Twitter. So far to date I’ve made 16,048, what! thats not so unusual, And I’ll continue to use Twitter how I see fit. 

But, today something happened that simply aggravated me. I went downstairs to make some breakfast and a cuppa tea, when I was called into the living room, my sister was sitting on the arm of my mothers couch, and my sister turned to me with a smile and said “I’ve just got mum on Twitter and now she’s following you” clearly they both thought this was a great idea. My first and only reaction was to turn away and walk back to the kitchen. Can’t I have just one small corner of the internet to myself without family looking over my shoulder. Its bad enough that they all on facebook and give me shit because of the status updates that I post there. “Your weird” is their favorite. I can’t behaving that crap over on Twitter too. I actually censor myself on facebook most of the time because I can’t be dealing with the bullshit I get from them downstairs. I just don’t need it. If I had to censor what I enter onto Twitter I’d go fucking nuts. And I look forward to my 20,000th tweet. Yes I’m a Tweet-whore, deal with it. I like twitter the way it is, and most of the people that are following me are people I haven’t actually met in real life. And thats how it should be.

Google+;

Well its new, only about 2 weeks old right now and you can’t just get in you need an invite from someone who’s on there. And so far I’m liking it and the fact none of my family are on G+ is freaking awesome. And I do intent to block them if they appear and add me to one of their circles. But that’ll mean I can’t post anything public are they’ll be about to see it, so I figure a simple block would be the better way to go. Otherwise I’ll have to post something to every circles I have except the one they are in and not make it public, which is basically censoring myself. I have no doubt that they are happy just to stay on facebook and not migrate to G+. I’m hoping anyway.

Its not a nice feeling that everything you post online is being scrutinized by family, who then think it’s funny to make fun of you. To me it just proves the they really don’t know me at all, they’ve known me twice as long as my two best mates, and my best mates know me better then my family, who never take an interest in anything I do unless it reflects on them in some way. If I don’t shave or cut my hair for awhile I get the “You look like a tramp go cut your hair and have a shave” “why” is my usual response. I then wait a week before I even consider doing either.

So if my family are like this in my real life why do I need it in my social networks. Answer I simply don’t and I’ll try to avoid it where ever I can and if that means blocking my family from Google+ then so be it.