Friday, July 10, 2009

If only I could hide your news feed in real life

So I have not authored anything in quite awhile, I’ve been busy, tis the summer, all that good jazz. Something has been on my mind for awhile though and I may as well spit the thoughts out.

Nowadays we have Twitter, Facebook feeds, RSS readers, status updates on every IM client possible, and they all inundate us with way more info on a person than we even imagined we wanted.


On a given day I can wake up and look at Facebook to see a post where someone bitches about being awake early, a picture of new hardwood floors (!), or a comment on a failed relationship. This all leads me emotionally to two ends:

First, I realize out of 400 plus people I’ve added on Facebook, I could care less about what 350 of them are doing on a day to day basis, if that. On Twitter, I don’t care at all what anyone is doing that moment, and MySpace, well I just deleted all of you and myself on that one.

Second, I wonder how many people feel that way about my updates. Now I do not exploit my inner emotions a fraction as much as the people who really irk me. I have a new girlfriend, yet I rarely mention her, I am in constant physical pain, yet I don’t complain, I have a tedious 9 to 5 job like most of this country, and I just get up and go. However, I am sure comments I make about hockey games, political action, or lame jokes are equally boring to some as their complaints of life are to me.

The mega question and overall point is this. Are we in reality further distancing emotional attachment to each other by over saturating ourselves with too much info on our friends? These systems are designed to “bring us closer” and “connect” but I find myself every day removing someone permanently from my news feed, and I, although I tried, could give a crap about what you Twitter. Am I in turn alienating friends who don’t care about whatever gibberish I post?

I wonder if the people who reach out the most with these services are just too outgoing or are they people who historically never got any attention from peers and now feel they are accepted and heard just because they were “Added” by someone on the community.

Maybe we’ve reached a point where we need to back off and leave a little more mystery to the world. As a telecomm geek and media professional, I understand connectedness extremely well, but for the love of l33t, I just don’t understand why you deemed it necessary to post a picture of your sick hamster on my wall.

4 comments:

Newman said...

I find that you are correct. No one cares what I post, and I generally don't either. And I rarely care about what others post. I am interested when something catches my eye though, for example I saw today a friend posted that they were "in remission." I didn't even know they had cancer, cause i missed that tweet! ha. but at least I got the good news. But I pay so little attention, that its ok. I, for example, didnt know you had a GF. congrats.

My thing lately is to capitalize on other people being obsessive to use to my advantage. i ask if people wanna grab lunch, and rather than call 20 people, i let them call me. it works.

Jason said...

Very on point comment Newman. Esp about how you can use it to a advanage.

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