Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Faceless Book

JamestheThickheaded has a hilarious post about his recent dive into social networking that is told in his inimitable stream of conciousness and Rorschachish mixed metaphorical way.

To me, setting up a social networking page is kinda like buying a fixer upper house... Oh, it has so much potential to be such a beautiful place, look at all the neat features and wonderful things in it...and you spend all this time fixing up your "house", in fact it starts consuming you...and hey!...look at all the people from the past that ummmm... come out of the woodwork to visit you. And it ends up being kinda
like THIS

So, I think I'll take the advice...I'll "get out" before I get in and before I need an exorcism to remove my Facebook site. And I will continue to have the freedom of not sitting for hours trying to figure out who someone is and if my wife might care if the woman with the Elvira avatar is my "friend", having to decide which total strangers or casual internet aquaintances to befriend or not, and I won't spend my evenings turning down invitation after invitation by the same to be someone's "friend, contact, significant someone, casual aquaintance #3,764, mutual admirer, network associate, buddy, or long lost grade, junior high, high school, college, religious or business chum".

If you're my friend, you probably have my email address or phone number. Good 'nuff.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey! I wanted to be your facebook friend, and I couldn't find you on facebook. Keep your facebook account for a while. Won't you?

Anonymous said...

Brilliant post! I've been thinking along much the same lines myself, and in fact have given up Facebook until Pascha to give myself time to do more spiritual reading (which includes your blog, apparently...) Like you, I figure anyone important to me already knows where to find me. Or maybe I'm just getting too old to care. :-)

Abraham said...

is facebook in the same/or a similar category as blogging?

Anonymous said...

I admit, I'm enjoying Facebook. It's nice to just keep up with out-of-town family, and even with my fellow parishioners during the week.

Steve Robinson said...

Kirk, you can't be my friend, I don't have a Facebook page. :)

Mary, you're probably using it for what it could be but usually isn't. Larry and Abe, yes, Facebook is much like blogging and podcasting etc. I'll probably do a blog post later on the topic, but our validation as human beings now comes from hits, downloads, comments, page views, stat counters, visits, profile views, links, tags, trackbacks, and memes instead of face to face relationships. My guess would be that it is the rare blogger/podcaster who doesn't check stats at least once in a while...too old to care or too humble to care, that is the question. All this stuff has to mean something and it probably ain't good.

Unknown said...

Facebook, like many things, can be used for Good or Evil. I joined a few weeks ago and it has been a great blessing to find people I never thought I would see again. That said, I spend no more than five minutes a day looking at it, if I log in at all.

Seraphim

Fr. James Coles said...

hahahahahahahaha My blog is also worth zip! So much for selling out and telling my soul to take it easy. Toss the plans for bigger barns!