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

[rbandrews]

Clearly, you should use Vine. :)

I really like those two quotes. For me, I had a Facebook account at one point, but I never used it because I couldn't find the "make a long post like on Livejournal" button. Without long posts, I didn't see the point. You can't say anything. Pretty much the same as Twitter, which is like Livejournal for illiterates. And I don't remember who said it, but Linkedin is blogging for people with no souls.

It seems odd that you'd say IM / Skype / phone are bad because you're too guarded. For me, I find it a lot easier to talk to people one at a time than all at once. I'm more guarded the larger my audience is.

[thanate]

I think this is one of those "just do it" problems. Very difficult to start.

[aamcnamara]

Fwiw, I have found that there is always a period of adjustment when one starts IMing a new person--okay, how do I capitalize, how many emoticons do we use, which ones signify which emotions--and it is a little exhausting but eventually evens out between each person's default style.

Not to imply that you just have to push through that part! and it will be great! because no., but just as another data point; especially early on in IMing someone (even if it's with someone I already know offline/in another online context--this happened with my sister), I am willing to forgive a lot of misunderstanding because we are still forming our own particular IM style. And there is an effort on my part to understand their IM quirks as well as to make my own comprehensible. If that...makes sense at all.

[jazzfish]

FB does have long-post functionality. They call it "notes" and it's ... poorly integrated, at best, but it does exist.

Twitter, which is like Livejournal for illiterates

They serve wildly different functions. I might agree that Twitter is LJ for people with ADD.

("8:00 I lost my hairbrush." "8:05 Oh, there it is." I am honestly baffled as to why Alex hasn't taken to Twitter.)

I avoid LinkedIn like the plague.

In larger groups I don't *expect* to say anything. Small groups or one-on-one are much different stresses.

[rbandrews]

That makes sense. I was thinking more, I am looser when I write something only one person will see (like an email) than when I write something a lot of people will see (like a public post).

[jazzfish]

That does seem to be the case. Though it's not exactly that it's difficult to /start/ as it is to keep going. Watch that second step, it's a doozy. And all the ones after it, too.

[jazzfish]

oh! That makes a great deal of sense. I had been assuming that it was just me that was weird, that I was going to have to adjust to how everyone else talks. (Which may yet be the case, but.) It hadn't occurred to me that everyone has to do the dance of 'how do our verbal/typographical styles mesh.' Thank you. :)

[aamcnamara]

I am glad it was useful to you!

[https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkLBjyzIxon8jvozMuweRNOE6Vx9DtMyKg]

I figure people I'm talking to are my friends and they get me. Or if they don't get me, they'll cut me some slack.

If they're not my friend yet then maybe we're just becoming friends, or they're old friends and we're reconnecting. At that point, they either get me, don't and cut me some slack or don't and we don't progress any further, all of which are OK by me.

I'm a warts and all kinda person. Love me or leave me alone, and if you love me, you love me for (or, perhaps, despite) my warts.

[https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawkLBjyzIxon8jvozMuweRNOE6Vx9DtMyKg]

And why in someone's name does this site mess up my OpenID? It's Joe, again. Looks like I'll have to sign up for a regular account if I want to keep posting...

[jazzfish]

I'd like to think like that, and I think I'm making some progress towards thinking like that. Through both inclination and decades of training, I'm skittish about opening up to people, to the point where it's difficult to be 'really me' even when I'd want to. (Less so in environments where the people are already predisposed to be like me anyway, such as, say, in a beach house surrounded by two dozen gamers.)

I do recommend a regular account: among other things, you might end up posting something yourself... :)

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

I can so relate to this entire post.

I despise Facebook and haven't used it in years. I tried a while back, but I just don't like it and it is intrusive. So many people have abandoned LJ for Facebook only and that makes me very sad. I won't break down and use it. I just miss people, instead.

At first, Twitter seemed like a train wreck to me, but as I grow accustomed to it, some evenings I enjoy following conversations. Occasionally, I reply to tweets, but I feel so out of place with all the published people. I just feel invisible, I guess. Even less frequently, I tweet.

E-mail is nice, though I'm so busy that I'm not always quick to respond to e-mails I receive.

IM and phone are less attractive because I feel trapped by them. And, like you, I'm a slow texter, though I do use it to communicate with my kids.

I've been wishing more people would come back to LJ. I miss the sense of community here.

And, on a completely different note: Can you believe it's been TWO YEARS since we attended VP???

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Amen about Facebook. I manage about five minutes a month before it becomes intolerable. Haven't been able to face even trying Twitter.

[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.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Well there is Skype. And I have similar problems. People all forgot how to deal with email, me included.

[jazzfish]

I've found Twitter to be, mm, less teeth-clenchingly infuriating than Facebook. Mostly because I like the people I follow on Twitter whereas the folk on Facebook are often either family, or friends I didn't realise were some flavour of disagreeable. It's still a machine-gun of one-liners, though.

[jazzfish]

tamnonlinear speculated once that a lot of people were on LJ because it was the only option, and Facebook is a much more natural online habitat for them: short posts, lots of 'likes' and easy 'me too' comments, photos with tagging... "the internet for extroverts." I just wish they hadn't dragged so many people with them.

I've never been a terribly prolific LJ poster... if I've dropped off since, say, 2005 it's not by all that much.

I am simultaneously terrified and appalled that it's been two years since VP. TWO YEARS. Where did the time go? (To hiding, and adapting, and learning to live in Vancouver, mostly.)

[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.

[jazzfish]

The thing about Skype is that it's a one-on-one situation where there's not wandering-around looking at museums or wildlife or whatever to fill in the blank spaces. So I worry that I can't carry my half of the conversation.

I am almost certainly overthinking and overworrying, but I've yet to figure out how to convince the rest of my brain of that.

[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. :)

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

I find I can deal better with Skype if there is more than one person on one side, or if I am on the laptop and it is just one window. But that is with dad. What about skyping while both sides are watching the same TV or something? Or do you have a vonage landline? I do a lot of calling when I'm puttering about the house,,,

[culfinriel.livejournal.com]

That's pretty much exactly how I feel. Sounds stupid, but I thought I was the only one who felt like this.

[jazzfish]

Not the only one at all.

Miss you. Hope all is well.

[plumbob78.livejournal.com]

I despise email. I have so goddamned much of it at work I just don't want to deal with it at home. And I never feel like I can scrape together enough interesting stuff to say for a proper email anyway. Or a blog post. Every once in a while I'll try it, then I just stop again. Facebook and Twitter are just about my speed. One-liners and quips I can do.

[jazzfish]

Huh. For me work-email and home-email are totally different beasts. (For one thing, I *want* to talk to people on home-email.) But I usually don't have to write much for work-email, just a line or two for most of them.

[plumbob78.livejournal.com]

To be fair, most of my work emails could be answered in one or two lines, but only if profession courtesy and my personal code allowed me to reply: "Yes. Duh." or "No. Shut up." unfortunately most of the important emails require significantly more elaboration.

I guess the bigger problem is I'm rubbish at social emails.