And I don’t mean the NSA with their illegal wiretapping of American citizens.
Bear with me. I am pretty much a Luddite when it comes to gizmos and gadgets. I just recently got my first cell phone, and I leave it off whenever I’m not on it. I think I have actually HAD to use it once in eight months. I don’t like talking on a standard phone, so I really loathe the idea of someone being able to get a hold of me 24/7.
In addition, contrary to my online persona, I am a highly private person in my real life. This is the reason I have resisted having a blog for so long, as well as why I don’t–well, didn’t now–Twitter or use Facebook. I don’t have a LiveJournal (or a DeadJournal, either), and I certainly don’t have a MySpace page. The idea that people all around the world could rifle through my personal life made me uneasy–even though I’d be the one controlling the content.
However, I’ve had friends bug me to get on the Facebook, and my brother wanted me to Twit (yes, I know it’s Tweet, but Twit is funnier) as part of my job (he’s my boss), so I signed up for both. I am also, obviously, blogging as part of my new embracing of online exposure, but I draw the line at MySpace. I also have no need for LinkedIn, and I prefer blogging to having a LiveJournal.
In other words, this is as techno/internet-friendly as I get. I will be adding a fiction blog in the future as well as one other blog, but that’s it.
The problem with Facebook, and, to a lesser extent, Twitter is that it’s so easy to hop from one person to another. It’s like shopping at Target. You go in to get one or two items, and you walk out with thirty. You don’t know HOW those extra items got into your cart, but you end up footing the bill.
The day I set up my Facebook account, I added the few people I wanted as friends. Then, I surfed. And surfed. And surfed. I added a group as well as became a fan of certain people. I noticed that I started to feel pressure to add more people because it seemed like everyone on Facebook had zillions of friends. Personally, I wanted a maximum of ten friends, but I kept feeling that external pressure to add, add, add.
I got my first request to friend someone the other day. It was from a girl I knew in high school. It threw me because I didn’t know her well, but I added her anyway. I have no idea why she requested to be friends with me, but it only seemed polite to accept. Plus, I was curious.
It’s odd because I don’t keep in touch with anyone from my past. Once I go through a phase in life, I tend to leave it behind. There are several reasons for this, and it makes using Facebook difficult because FB seems to be all about the past. No, that’s not fair. There is more to FB than that, but it does bring up questions of whether I want to contact people from my past or not.
As for Twitter, I am not sure I care for it. I think it’s a good way to get a message out to a group of people, but does anyone really care that at the given moment I am sitting in my sweats in my computer room blogging about Twitter? I think not. There is enough minutiae floating around the interwebs as it is–I am hesitant to add any more.
In the end, though, I am a writer. This means I write. I love writing, and I ought to grab onto any vehicle that pushes me to write more. So, I will continue to blog; I will continue to Twit; I will continue to use Facebook. Just don’t expect me to be happy about it.
Addendum: I feel vaguely stalkerish to hunt down people thruugh all these venues. True, most people on Facebook have private profiles, but I’ve found a few people I knew in the past who have public ones. It’s strange to learn so much about them when I haven’t talked to them in years. I feel like a voyeur of sorts, though, granted, they are the ones who wrote their profiles.
Still, it’s a bit unsettling to know this much about someone I really don’t know any longer. It’s similar to how I feel about online dating–it’s putting the cart ahead of the horse.
In addition, I can see how it would be really easy for an introvert like me (stop laughing, I am) to use Facebook as a way to not have to meet people in the real world. It provides a community that simulates what happens in real life, but really isn’t the same. It makes sense to keep in contact with people who aren’t in the immediate vicinity via Facebook, but as with email, it’s too easy to communicate through the computer rather than make a date with someone local.
I am a person of inertia. I fear that Facebook will just enable this quirk of mine. We shall see.
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