on social media

[jazzfish]

I hate Facebook. I use it because I know too many people who are only on Facebook, some of whom I want to keep up with, but I hate it. I hate that it won't show me everything I want to see, I hate that it keeps showing me things I don't want to see, and I hate its intrusion into every facet of my life. I would give 1:2 odds on me abandoning Facebook entirely by this time next year.

(I am bemused by Google Plus. I'm on there but see little reason to use it.)

I enjoy reading Twitter but I am not well suited to using it. Twitter is one big internet party. At parties I am consistently the guy who's either standing around looking a bit lost, or talking excitedly to the same three or four people for several hours and wishing we were someplace a little bit quieter and more comfortable.

(Two quotes: "Facebook is the internet for extroverts" and "Facebook is where you hate your friends; Twitter is where you like strangers.")

I adore long-form personal blogging, which is why I'm still on DW/LJ and why DW doubles as my RSS reader. Not much more to say about that. I rarely comment on other people's posts but I do read them as they go by, and appreciate them a great deal.

I miss email, which is a stupid thing to say because I seem to know a number of people who want to communicate with me by email. I think what I miss is an ability and desire to be open on email without worrying about whether I'm about to say something stupid (for any of a number of definitions of stupid) and revising all the soul out of it until I'm exhausted and just don't bother writing.

I am apprehensive about IM. A side effect of talking so much to the same person for so long is that I'd built up an idiosyncratic ... personal language of chat, almost, so that talking with anyone now feels like I'm having to mentally translate as I go. That ties in with the fear of doing/saying something stupid from email, too.

I'm not sure about Skype but I'm also not so sure about the phone, or talking in person for long periods of time, because I'm not sure I can hold up my end of a conversation for that long.

(I dislike text messaging because I can't type fast or accurately enough on the Device's keyboard.)

... I think what's going on here is that I miss being less guarded around people, but I don't know how to turn that off. Although... hm.

Comments

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

Ditto much of what's been said by you both. I do get on Facebook, mostly because it's where I keep track of more local folks and a handful of Old Friends.

I like Twitter because I CAN just sit back an watch. Er, eavesdrop. Or occasionally say something if I feel the need.

I do often miss is the old newsreader format where I could flip through and maintain several conversations in different groups at the same time.

But yes--I prefer the blog format. As a reader, I enjoy the reading, and the writing is my natural way to explore and organize the whirlwind that is my brain. :)

As for being guarded... yeah. There are many days I find it painfully frustrating that the folks whose company I feel most comfortable in are scattered over thousands of miles. I currently roleplay through my daily life, alas, with the exception of close family members who came to the conclusion some years ago that they could either accept my oddness or expect my absence.

[jazzfish]

I never really got into Usenet, somehow. I followed a very small handful of newsgroups, but, I dunno. Just never found my niche.

The great thing about the internet is that it lets me keep in touch with some excellent people thousands of miles away. The awful thing about the internet is that it reminds me that those people /are/ thousands of miles away.

[blairmacg.livejournal.com]

I was on sff.net for awhile. It's where I discovered what that new-fangled World Wide Web thingy could do, and it was my life-line I was a stay-at-home mom who'd just moved across the country to a little rural town. :)