Blogging & Teh Internetz

I started blogging a ridiculous amount of time ago. For a while I had quite the following, and wrote very clever bits now and then. I liked that. I would see something & think "hey, I can't wait to write about that."

I know some of you know this.

Nowadays, I don't blog as often as I used to, mostly because of Facebook. That site helps me to keep up with folks in a more collaborative way. Sometimes too collaborative-- I don't really want to know some of the quizzes or other info people post.

But FB is changing in the next few days. Things that used to be private by default will now be public. Well, my blog has been public before (and obviously is now). And that's searchable by anyone. I used to get a lot of hits for info I posted, and used to keep up with it to see what brought someone to my site. But I choose what I say here a little more formally than what I put up on a status report. Obviously, that's going to have to change.

But there are so many things that have evolved in the last 10 years related to the Internet (like, for example-- you can figure out who of the people you follow on Twitter also follow you...and vice versa.) It's kind of strange to care about this kind of thing. I don't care that Tor books doesn't follow my tweets, but when it's someone close to me, I wonder why. I just went in and added a bunch of people who were following me & I wasn't return following...but then I also deleted a bunch of Facebook folks who I barely know.

It's kind of schizo. It's all kind of weird etiquette cues & social awkward moments granted by the Internet. Wanna feel alienated & alone just like you did in High School? Go search for the popular kids on FB and see if they'll accept your 20 years later friend request.

And there are so many things I should be doing but instead I'm logging in to this stupid website & reading which movie you can't do without, or that you always take gum & your camera with you when you go out. It's micromanaged info that I don't need that creates a false sense of intimacy with some people and makes me feel weird about others. Talk about feeling a bit out of my generation!!

But I will keep thinking about this stuff, and try to make more time for things other than Facebook, because it's too addictive & too easy to post stupid things that people don't need to know.

If Hemingway had Tweeted, what would he have written about? Or Dorothy Parker? Or Shakespeare? And how many other works would they NOT have written? Go ponder it, and perhaps think up a quiz for it.