I recently joined up Facebook. A friend invited me to join and I figured that if he joined then I should join. I had no interest up to that point. In fact, I will admit to you that I deliberately resisted joining Facebook because I just felt a little uneasy about it. I also resisted joining MySpace until my kids told me to sign up and I held for sometime. But I finally broke down. I haven't been back to MySpace in months. I got bored with it.
My problem with Facebook and MySpace, and other services like them, is that they seem so impersonal to me. In most cases you are able to see the person whose "site" you have been accepted to but not always. Sometimes you see things that you would rather not see - scary, frightful visions of these people you thought you knew. You read things that surprises you - words, phrases and statements that make you wonder just who this person really is and why are they posting such things.
Sometimes I have been a little stunned, no, shocked, at seeing more than I really want to, or should, see. I can't help wonder if they have any clue what kind of impression they are leaving. And then I realize, they don't care.
The problem with these "connection" sites is that you really don't know if you are "seeing" the real person. It's very different, very shallow, compared to being able to talk on the phone or sit across from each other and have a conversation. I mean, a real conversation with eye contact, voice inflections, body language. "Conversing" over the Internet is like talking to someone about a picture you are looking at and having them draw it simply from your description while not being able to look at the same picture. You usually get some pretty crazy pictures.
Case in point: my daughter Haley was having a conversation with her mom via texting. Mom was out of town and daughter was having some "pain" issues. Mom was texting something about being sorry about not being here to comfort her and daughter texted back and wrote, "I know but your not mom." Now, there ensued a slight misunderstanding about what daughter had wrote, since punctuation has gone out the window with texting, and Mom felt like daughter was saying that she wasn't a mom because she wasn't there to care for her daughter.
Got that?
Now, maybe I'm just being "old fashioned" and unwilling to accept the changes coming our way in the 21st century. Possibly, though I think I keep up pretty well. My problem is that texting and connecting via the Internet has taken the place of warm blooded, personal, exposing myself just a little with you, conversation. It's harder to determine what's real in a relationship through the computer or simply words on a small phone screen. (By the way, if I have anything to say beyond two or three words when I text, I call.)
I had someone invite me to be their friend the other day. I didn't know who they were. I wrote to them and said so. They wrote back and said we had a connection with a mutual friend. When I checked their "friends," they had over 3000 friends. I decided that the invitation to be their friend was more in hopes of me joining the ever growing statistics of friends they were accumulating and not out of a sincere desire to "reconnect" with an old friend. So I declined.
On the other hand, since joining Facebook, I have in fact reconnected with some old high school and college friends that I had lost contact with over the years due to time, distance, and moves. It's been rather exciting to "chat" and slowly catch up, even more exciting to actually call each other and talk, hearing their voice, laughing together, sharing joys and disappointments. All that was missing was a fireplace and a beverage.
All I am saying is that I really wonder just how interested people are about what I might be doing just at this moment (Jim is....fill in the bland for the moment). Though I know I am interested in knowing what my friends and family are up to in life, what they like to read, what jobs the have, where they are and how their families have grown, I'm wondering if we aren't bordering of narcissism when we chart our every moment on the web for people to see. Are we really connecting? We have a generation or two that have become so engulfed in this technology that their interpersonal skill have developed at a snails pace. They crave intimacy but don't know how to develop healthy relationships. As one character states in the movie He's Just Not That Into You, "I had this guy leave me a voicemail at home so I called him at work, he emailed me to my Blackberry, so I texted to his cell, and now you have to just go around checking all these portals just to get rejected by 7 different technologies. It's exhausting."
I do find all these new ways of "connecting" exhausting at times. And often so impersonal. But I do it anyway. Go figure.
"Jim is.... finished writing this post."
My problem with Facebook and MySpace, and other services like them, is that they seem so impersonal to me. In most cases you are able to see the person whose "site" you have been accepted to but not always. Sometimes you see things that you would rather not see - scary, frightful visions of these people you thought you knew. You read things that surprises you - words, phrases and statements that make you wonder just who this person really is and why are they posting such things.
Sometimes I have been a little stunned, no, shocked, at seeing more than I really want to, or should, see. I can't help wonder if they have any clue what kind of impression they are leaving. And then I realize, they don't care.
The problem with these "connection" sites is that you really don't know if you are "seeing" the real person. It's very different, very shallow, compared to being able to talk on the phone or sit across from each other and have a conversation. I mean, a real conversation with eye contact, voice inflections, body language. "Conversing" over the Internet is like talking to someone about a picture you are looking at and having them draw it simply from your description while not being able to look at the same picture. You usually get some pretty crazy pictures.
Case in point: my daughter Haley was having a conversation with her mom via texting. Mom was out of town and daughter was having some "pain" issues. Mom was texting something about being sorry about not being here to comfort her and daughter texted back and wrote, "I know but your not mom." Now, there ensued a slight misunderstanding about what daughter had wrote, since punctuation has gone out the window with texting, and Mom felt like daughter was saying that she wasn't a mom because she wasn't there to care for her daughter.
Got that?
Now, maybe I'm just being "old fashioned" and unwilling to accept the changes coming our way in the 21st century. Possibly, though I think I keep up pretty well. My problem is that texting and connecting via the Internet has taken the place of warm blooded, personal, exposing myself just a little with you, conversation. It's harder to determine what's real in a relationship through the computer or simply words on a small phone screen. (By the way, if I have anything to say beyond two or three words when I text, I call.)
I had someone invite me to be their friend the other day. I didn't know who they were. I wrote to them and said so. They wrote back and said we had a connection with a mutual friend. When I checked their "friends," they had over 3000 friends. I decided that the invitation to be their friend was more in hopes of me joining the ever growing statistics of friends they were accumulating and not out of a sincere desire to "reconnect" with an old friend. So I declined.
On the other hand, since joining Facebook, I have in fact reconnected with some old high school and college friends that I had lost contact with over the years due to time, distance, and moves. It's been rather exciting to "chat" and slowly catch up, even more exciting to actually call each other and talk, hearing their voice, laughing together, sharing joys and disappointments. All that was missing was a fireplace and a beverage.
All I am saying is that I really wonder just how interested people are about what I might be doing just at this moment (Jim is....fill in the bland for the moment). Though I know I am interested in knowing what my friends and family are up to in life, what they like to read, what jobs the have, where they are and how their families have grown, I'm wondering if we aren't bordering of narcissism when we chart our every moment on the web for people to see. Are we really connecting? We have a generation or two that have become so engulfed in this technology that their interpersonal skill have developed at a snails pace. They crave intimacy but don't know how to develop healthy relationships. As one character states in the movie He's Just Not That Into You, "I had this guy leave me a voicemail at home so I called him at work, he emailed me to my Blackberry, so I texted to his cell, and now you have to just go around checking all these portals just to get rejected by 7 different technologies. It's exhausting."
I do find all these new ways of "connecting" exhausting at times. And often so impersonal. But I do it anyway. Go figure.
"Jim is.... finished writing this post."
1 comment:
Good point...it is a variation of transparency...twisted and on its head in a knot. Transparency without accountability is a kind of voyeurism.
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