My selective social networking
From the start, at least in my perspective, I have never really gotten on the social network bandwagon. Communities were the big thing around the turn of the millennium and I never had the desire to join one, despite that “everybody” else was gleefully hopping into the pond. It just didn’t seem like something worth my time, seeing as the main activity people used the services for was to brag about how drunk they were the past weekend, the latest gossip and planning to get even more drunk the following weekend. In retrospect I’m quite glad I stayed away and did more interesting things with my time. Like sit and stare at a wall or watch grass grow.
Things really have to make sense and I like to see a clear use before I commit to joining anything, be it a social network, a service or what have you. If all it’s about is performing pointless communication and “waste time”, I’m not interested. Twitter has so far been one of the better choices I have made in the social networking realm, and I do think it has added to my life in a very positive way. I have gotten to know a lot of really smart people from all walks of life, all over the world. I will admit that I did not quite understand twitter when I started using it, but it grew on me with time and I now see it as something obvious. Google+ might be heading any way at this point, but I have hopes that it will also become a strong tool for me to use. Right now it’s more of an experiment for me.
Facebook, on the other hand, still confuses me to no end. Again, it’s the same “everybody is on it” that happened to the communities some 11 years ago and I’m very uninterested. Sure, I could probably get in touch with a whole bunch of people that I at one point or another lost contact with and I might even in theory start communicating with them on a more regular basis. But if they are not already in my life right now, what difference does it make to me? All the people that are truly close to me, I already have ways to get in touch with. Often times several different ways, just in case.
I don’t think I need any more distractions than I already have and that is pretty much what I view Facebook as; a huge sinkhole for my time. I don’t need to be pulled away from all the things I need to do and want to do, there is already enough of that to go around and then some. Distractions are so frequent and really throw me off the rails so often that I consider my life nearly complete in that aspect. If I want to play games, I sit down in the sofa, get comfy and dive into whatever it is I want to play, rather than huddle down by my computer and let Facebook chart everything I do, like and pay attention to. And I don’t even want to get into the whole Farmville discussion again.
And there we have another reason I shy away from Facebook, with all its hooks and tracing cookies all over the place. I like to at least have some level of control over my personal information, hence my own website and so on. In the case of Facebook I just don’t feel I have control as I prefer to have. As long as this is the case, I won’t be signing up at time soon. Quite possibly never.
Whenever a new social network comes along, I think long and hard about wether to join or not, weighing it against the option of not having it and having more time to spend on other things. There is of course some variation given the structure and form of said social network, but in most cases I do consider an awful lot of aspects about the whole thing. Most of the time I simply elect to ignore and keep going with what I have, which has turned out pretty well so far. While it might sound like the social network in question becomes a “must” and something I have to do regularly, which is not the case for me. It’s the expectations of other people that become the problem, as they expect me to be on and available via said social network.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like to interact with other people and I’m not often described as an anti-social person. At least not as far as I’m aware, which I suppose could be a warning sign. But I do like to have some level of control over my time and if I have too many things going at once, I don’t have the time I want to fully enjoy life and everything around me. Rather than having to keep up with a lot of people all tugging on me for a moment of my attention, I choose to limit the ways in which people can “grab a hold of me”. As a result I have fewer things to take care of during the course of my day and I can concentrate on what I really want to do, like my writing or taking a walk on a beautiful day.
If social networks enrich your life and really add to you as a person, then all the more power to you. I just deliberately choose to be on a select few of them and do what I want to do the most, with as few hooks as possible. I probably wouldn’t want to give up on twitter, given how easy it is to use and how many people I frequently interact with via it. It’s an unobtrusive way of doing things, so it matches how I like to work. Get on, bang out text and send it off or reply to someone, and switch off again.
I am quite aware of the fact that I might be loosing out by not being on Facebook. There might be deals that I miss, occasions that pass me by or things that are relevant to me which I never hear of. This is all fine and dandy and I have just learned to let go of it. My time is limited and I have decided to focus on a few core things in life that I really enjoy.
