Saturday, May 16, 2009

Remember when blogs first became popular and everybody you knew had a blog and 98% of them sucked, or just didn't get updated ever and were eventually abandoned? And all these experts opined that bloggers were big old narcissists.

I'll agree with that, I mean, how full of myself do I have to be to think that anyone gives half a crap about any of my useless anecdotes? And I think most, if not all bloggers go through a phase where they're concerned about what everyone else thinks and obsessed with the traffic coming to their site. I had one of those phases where I signed up for every blog catalog/directory/listing service and checked my stats a few times a day. I was consumed with how to get more people to look at my words. Wanna know what I got out of that? A sum total of nothing. I almost ditched my blog, then I realized that I was writing because I kind of like to write and if other people care or like it, great, if not, who cares? I'm a phenomenally not-social person in real life, why did I want to be social online?

Right about then, all of these social networking sites started popping up -

First it was MySpace - which I signed up for because... I don't know. When I was a derby chick, MySpace was a way for all of us to keep in touch (you know, since we only saw each other 4 days a week) and it was helpful for publicizing derby stuff and passively stalking keeping in touch with people I've had no contact with since high school.

Then came Facebook, which - I've had the account for well over a year, but I still don't get it - why the hell do you think anyone cares about your fucking status updates every 4 minutes? No one cares that you are thinking about taking a nap, or that you're wearing brown socks, or that you're "now a fan of carbon-based-lifeforms". I'm terminally unemployed, but even I don't have the time or inclination to dredge up any give-a-fuck for people who update their status every time they pee. And to be completely honest, when my sister talked my mom into getting a Facebook, I quickly became even less interested.

And now it's Twitter* & **- it's like the social networking site for those who find Facebook too complicated? It's just status updates - endless status updates - cut up into bite-sized portions of 140-or-less-characters for our attention deficit society. Not to mention how it's been all but taken over by advertisers and spammers.

(And we won't even go into the sites people try to get me to join so we can compare and contrast our tastes in music, books and movies)

If bloggers are narcissists, what label can be applied social-networking addicts? At least when I blog, I try to tell a story, well, I try to do more than just vomit out word-vomit.

What I'm really wondering is... why do I need this social networking crap? I can honestly say that I haven't formed a lasting relationship, or even strengthened any of my existing relationships through e-social e-networking. If we're already friends, or you, for some ridiculous reason, want to foster a friendship with me, we can email, or IM, maybe even text on occasion, but I don't see why you would think that wanting me to read and comment on the mind-numbing details of your day-to-day existence might bring us closer together.

*speaking of Twitter, here's a couple quick tips on how to get un-followed by me:

1) Feel the need to follow 10,000 people and reply to EVERY SINGLE UPDATE OF THEIRS - even if it's just shit like "@random_person - lol :)" or "@other_random_person I agree!!!:)" so that the one or two times a day I check my twitter, the entire page is your face.

2) Update every time you do ANYTHING - eat, sleep, have sex, look out the window, change your clothes - so that the one or two times a day I check my twitter, the entire page is your face. No one is half as interesting as you think you are and no one is half as interested as you think they are.

** the only good thing about Twitter is the teensy handful of generally douche-tastic, yet actually kind of really funny celebrities who use it - people like Shaquille O'Neal, John Mayer and Diablo Cody. And the teensy handful of stupidly cool celebrities like Eric Hutchinson (swoon), Rainn Wilson and Mindy Kaling.***

*** the time I spent collecting those links was more time on Twitter than I've spent since I joined the site.