This is going to be the first blog I’m doing as a joint blog/vlog. The videos will not necessarily have the exact same wording, but will be similar.
I hate social networking. I really do. It started out great for me. I loved myspace and getting closer to people I barely knew from my group of friends until I realized that people post way too much information on their profiles.
When I say this I don’t necessarily mean that they put up every menial detail of their lives. I don’t even mind that too much, to a point. I like knowing my friends have watched some new movie that came out because then I can ask them what they thought about it and possibly go see it myself. I don’t even mind someone bitching about a bad day at work. These are things they’d likely tell everyone: even if you bump into randomly on the street. “Oh, hey, yeah, work sucks. You know.” The problem comes when things that are said are what you should only say to close personal friends or to the person you’re you’re talking about.
I’ve seen a couple break up through wall posts on Facebook. I’ve seen someone on myspace post passive aggressive rants about her roommate that the roommate could read. (And that quickly digressed into a flame war involving the poster, the roommate, and his girlfriend.)
Privacy is fading. I have had a livejournal for years upon years. I never saw it as a social device since it was more about writing details of my life to look back on later. That’s why my livejournal name is completely different than every other screen name I’ve ever used. The other day, someone was bugging me about not having enough information up on my profile. He looked up my screen name and it seems someone (not me) has an account on a dating site with the same name. No other details match up though. But he told me, “I’m going to assume you are Samantha from Washington D.C. because I found this. Since you won’t give me any more information, you could be anyone.”
And he hit it on the head there. We’ve gone from email addresses on message lists where you talk about They Might Be Giants all day and no one ever knows ages, faces, races, classes, to this social delving into each other, where we all assume that we must give up any information or facts on command, and that if we don’t, we’re hiding. But it’s not hiding to just not want to show every detail of my life. I deleted my Facebook for quite a few reasons (another one being that I didn’t want everyone’s personal lives detailed to me!).
There’s gotta be a balance where we can still talk about the new shoes we bought but people don’t send me replies on twitter to ask me questions they should be asking in private.
