The Social Net Work
My relationship to various social networking sites explained.
Facebook: I have more friends than I can possibly keep up with. In pursuit of fairness I avoid them all. It doesn’t help matters that many of my friends are bawdy gay men, and many of my other friends are Christian conservatives. These are folks I’d rather not have talking to one another, and I’d certainly rather not have them talking to one another on a page that third parties will use to evaluate my professionalism.
Periodically my mother in law gets annoyed with me because I do not follow family news on Facebook. I feel bad about this, but I don’t know what to do. Perhaps I could loan her some of my friends.
Friendster: Like you, I once belonged. Maybe I still do. I’m not sure.
LinkedIn: I have this strange sense that professional networking demands it. On reflection, I have no idea where this sense comes from. LinkedIn has never done me a speck of good, professional or otherwise.
MySpace: The surest way for me never to listen to your favorite band is to link me their MySpace page.
LibraryThing: I really thought I had a LibraryThing account, but I guess I don’t. That’s good, because I don’t update it.
Scribd: I joined Scribd on the afternoon that Perry v. Schwarzenegger came down, but I did so only to get a copy of the decision. The courts’ site had crashed. One would think I’d be a Scribd kind of guy. One would be wrong.
Twitter: I have the profound sense that I’m not getting it. I cannot fathom how anyone can keep up with the hundreds or even thousands of twitter feeds they subscribe to. So I have arbitrarily chosen twenty-five as my upper limit, and I will follow no more than that. One of them is the exhausting Dave Weigel, who tweets harder than anyone else I know.
Sure, sure, I can always follow a bunch of people on Twitter just for signaling reasons, without any pretense of actually following them. I can make no effort whatsoever to read everything they tweet. I can even be totally arbitrary about my Facebook interactions and leave it all up to chance. Somehow I can’t bring myself to do it. I fear the perception of unfairness so much that it’s paralyzing.
Others: If I belong to other social networking sites, I have mercifully forgotten all about them.
Livejournal?Report
Damn you. I said mercifully forgotten.Report
Two on my friends are on Facebook under assumed identities because of problems similar to yours – both want to prevent professional colleagues from meeting their other friends. I’m okay – all my friends and colleagues are obnoxious nerds.Report
Except for the bawdy gay men and Dave Weigel, this post describes me almost exactly.Report
Facebook: I ‘joined’ several years ago to try to get a look at my older son’s girlfriend. (It worked.) I never post on it, rarely check it and can’t understand why anyone else would, either. If someone I actually know wants to ‘friend’ me, I accept. I don’t know why anyone who doesn’t know me would want to ‘friend’ me, so I ignore those requests.
Twitter: I can’t sneeze in 140 characters or less (necessarily including at least one parenthetical expression) , I almost never have a thought or experience justifying the immediate reporting thereof and I seriously doubt anyone else does, either.
MySpace: This still exists?
LinkedIn: Those who wish to contact me for professional reasons can easily find out how to do so, therefore this is of no use to me.
The rest of them: Never heard of ’em.Report
Yep. Time for new media boot camp at Cato.Report
Jason Kuznicki “friended” Sarah Palin back in ’03 and Glenn Beck in ’05. I have the digital proof. Sorry, man, but your life as you know it is now over.
A word to the wise. Although it’s too late for Jason now, learn from this tragedy. “Friend” no one. Speak to no one. Do not say what you think, do not reveal what you feel. Today’s confidante is tomorrow’s racist, mass murderer, or Fox News commentator.
Sorry I had to out you, Jason, but truth comes before friendship. But look, I have some connections and can get you a gig. Do you know anything about cosmetics or produce?Report
I have no idea what Twitter is for either. I hope someday someone will explain to me why it’s useful. I used it to write random haiku for about a month or two and then forgot about it.
My Facebook consists of bawdy gay men and nerdy scientist types. And it’s actually fun to have them talk to each other because the two seemingly different social groups get along surprisingly well. Who knew?Report
I do facebook exclusively. I don’t have time for the others.Report
Twitter can be a serendipity machine–akin to StumbleUpon–or a sounding board of wit and banality, rarely in equal doses.
I like it.
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