Monday, March 16, 2009

Tweety

You know, there was a time when Teh Internetz was simpler. I used to hang out in a chatty bulletin board where the posts essentially could go so fast they were chatroom-esque and it was super fun. I also blogged, and had a pretty good following of commenters. I also would hang out and comment on their blogs. It was kind of fun, a round robin of comments & chatting and it would sometimes take me an hour to get done "blogging" in the morning.

That this was when I was very slowwwwwly writing my dissertation needs to not be said. It's been said before. Probably way too often, in fact. Probably not even this blog post is entirely original, but I'm feelin' it this morning.

Nowadays, it seems so much more complicated. You have facebook, and myspace, and twitter. And I update one but not the other or I use a different update on one but not the other. I have a half a ton of students and co-workers on my Facebook page, but not my twitter feed (I'd rather keep the twitter feed a little cleaner, although it's getting all cluttered up lately with total strangers cause if they follow you, you kind of feel all obligated, don't cha?) All I have on my myspace page, which is pretty much totally anonymous, is some family, a few friends who don't do blogger, and a few cool authors who I found through some channel or other... I don't remember actually. Oh, and dead people (poets like Anne Sexton who have "fake profiles".) It's very multiple personality-ish.

I have a good friend I know through blogs (is this the modern day equivalent of a pen pal?) who has decided to trim down the facebook thing and really only do "tweet deck." I tried the tweet deck the other day and didn't quite get into it yet. But he swears by it. Sigh. Maybe it's just the first day of Spring Break with fog and chilly weather still goin' strong but I'm feeling a little old and technophobic today.

Can't I just go back to the simpler days of chiseling out blog posts and commenting on other chiseled out posts? No? And if all my online personas & blogs meet, somehow, in the same space, will there be an implosion? Probably. Maybe it's worth it.

4 comments:

slyboots2 said...

It's killling me. All the stress of keeping all of these channels open and in business. On top of working, and having a life on the side...just killing me. I guess I haven't decided yet if I want to write more than I want to stay in touch on Facebook. Such a huge distraction, it is.

Anonymous said...

I still swear by it. It's the best thing for me in terms of organization. Updates are fed into FB. All my info. is now set up to come via TweetDeck. I now have more time to read y'all's blogs. I probably pissed off a lot of "friends" on FB but so it goes. Having a kid, my life is now all about the 100-character updates. Links are provided so i can go later and read more in-depth. I swear, they oughta pay me for the lip service I give'em. Bastids!

nissa, goddess after five said...

Hey! That looks like my cat!!

scott said...

Well-said, I think. It does get a little overwhelming.

I do this: If someone follows me on Twitter, I check them out. If they seem like some sort of real person that is somehow connected with my online life, I follow them. Otherwise I just ignore them. I also only follow people on Twitter who follow me also (with 2 exceptions). Why? I don't know. Something about the potential for genuine dialogue or something.

On Facebook, I only Friend people I know (IRL or online). I ignore everyone else.

I find none of these services as rewarding as blogging. I got online because I wanted to be able to express myself, to put something out there. Blogging accomplishes that for me, even if only a few people read.

Anyway, my point is really just this: Well-said.

Hello, Kim.