social rant

Don’t we love that face that’s called a book with no pages to flip through but its facebook all the same or that site that’s called twitter, when really birds would rather die than get on the internet. Are we so short of inventions that we end up calling ourselves half humans and half birds?….tweets, tweeple, tweethearts. But we love it all the same. Viva la tweeter et facebook.

You go for a party or whatever function and the only familiar person in a room of twenty is the host, you’re fidgeting about cocktail hour and dreading the idea of dinner cos you don’t know if you’ll be able to have a healthy conversation with the stranger beside you. Drink in hand, you act like you’re not feeling left out as you try hard not to bolt home…then suddenly the fairy godmother of socializing brings facebook alive for you, hovering on the head of the person next to you is a notification ‘you have two friends in common’ and the one next to him has a twitter update saying hilarious things about the other guests, almost the exact same things you think, and the cute fellow seating at your right at dinner, is a friend of your sister’s ex boyfriend…you realize you have at least a friend in common with 70% of the people around you,how liberating, now you can walk up with confidence to whoever and make conversation, surely having mutual friends and retweeting their thoughts would make people drop their guard and loosen up.

Can you really have 1000 ‘friends’, and like know each one of them or might have related to them closely at some point in your life? Why’s my optician adding me up on facebook minutes after I walk out of the overpriced clinic? Do I really want to be friends with the immigration officer handling my passport renewal or house of rep member from my state who just discovered the joys of online networking? Or the Iranian jeweler?
Some random requests I choose to ignore, just because we have a hundred or one friend in common doesn’t mean I want to open the door to my life to you. Suddenly some random person you don’t know sees you as his best friend,they talk about you like they know you personally cos now they know your birthday, and your favorite movies and your favorite music. They’ve combed through your profile, made some of your pictures their screen savers. They comment on your status with exaggerated ‘lols’ and ‘lwkmd’,they retweet your every post. And when you walk out tomorrow and they say hi to you, you’ll look on in confusion cos you don’t know this person who’s saying hi to you, this person who’s probably read your facebook/twitter update that ‘you’ve got a bad case of the Mexican food aftermath” and has probably dropped a lol’ comment there, this person that has wished you a happy birthday. Or in a store you’re oblivious that the person next to you knows more details about your life than your new boyfriend. You don’t know this person who intimately knows you. Now that’s spooky.

Facebooking/tweeting/bbming has changed the definition of friendship. The ‘friends’ you hardly talk to in reality are regular callers online, your online bffs. The random guy from the 8th floor who you just send a hello nod to in the elevator is suddenly your best friend online. He pokes, sends the annoying fun wall mails and the sweet personal mails, no he’s not hitting on you, just conversations, you reply and he replies and you joke and laugh, he tags you in his notes and you comment on his talents, and then you meet in the elevator and you hardly have anything to say but smile and say the usual ‘hi’ and then you get a wall post some minutes later‘nice seeing you today and oh, you looked smashing” suddenly words are loosened up online.Is that a new definition of friendship?Limited to a free flow of banter online and a mute drought of words in reality.
no one wants your phone number anymore, they all want your bb pin. Phone calls are slowly loosing their appeal.
Are we destroying the idea of human interaction as it’s meant to be? Are these social networking tools the most unsocial things? Signing off for a full day is like some sort of capital crime to the mind, like a drought of info, a social fast. You cant help but put up your thoughts or whatever jargon you want to when you’re stuck in traffic, some waiting room, out with friends or even when you’re really busy and wiped out. Its only fair that you put something up in the status box, you want to be heard, and you want to hear what other people are screaming and whispering about.

Prof Susan Grenfield of oxford university suggests from her research that if facebook and twitter continues unabated we’ll be blabbing idiots living in the moment and reacting instead of responding to life
”I often wonder whether real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning, and butchering animals to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf, it is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains or rather minds different from those of previous generations”
Enjoy, but don’t let it use you or thrash you and transform you to a blabbing idiot living in the moment.Rather use it as best as you can in the promotion of self business, and your talents and like me my beliefs.
social networking has made people more antisocial. If you're more comfortable tweeting than speaking, you need therapy. Happy tweeting #okbye #justarantingpost.

Comments

  1. dag i thought you had a picture of yourself up here

    dag nabbit

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  2. as u know i used to make a lot of friends through my blog and what not

    and i started to do the same on facebook then i thought "what purpose does it really serve"

    what am i trying to make all of these friends for

    what am i doing all of this for

    what is the ultimate goal

    i think the main reason we should blog, tweet or facebook or myspace is to get answers to the problems that afrikan people face across the world

    i think that would be a noble goal that all of us should strive to acheive

    ReplyDelete
  3. I also wanted to see your pic, lol. I'm a FB addict, I'm getting there on Twitter. Maybe I need therapy.

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  4. just read your comment on mine
    (covers face in shame)
    sweetheart....im soooo sorry.....long story then i traveled...as soon as i get back, we must make it happen

    ReplyDelete
  5. lollllll@optician adding me up on facebook minutes after I walk out of the overpriced clinic?!!!

    Yeahhhhh,thot u put up pictures here too!!!

    FB,overated. But blogging...haaaa,blog all over the place, can't hurt nobody!Plus antisocial harm's limited.

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  6. Girl, your post is spot on.

    I left facebook almost 2yrs ago and I haven't missed it. I understand it serving the purpose of communication between loved ones across the world, but after it became a case of "keeping up appearances" - I became sick of it and the addiction.

    Social networking is the best thing after sliced bread, but as we humans like to over do things, we've blown it out of proportion.

    Ps; I thought I was going to see your picture. Better luck next time.

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  7. oh oh, some intellectual stuff here.

    And that's a nice opening paragraph.

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  8. You hit the nail on the head!!but then change is the only constant thing in life...

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  9. I so hear you, when I see people with 3000 friends I wonder wat kinda drugs they take to keep up with the tide-its just impossible.....and now fb wants to know and broadcast ur exact location, wat for?! so ur crazy ex boyfriend knows where u and ur new man are hanging out? it aint going anyway thou and I wonder wat the next generation's idea of socializing will be!

    Oh and really like ur style of writing :)

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  10. Clueless and ignorant Prof Susan Grenfield of oxford university needs to get her facts right. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. So, what’s they going to do about it? Legislate? Put a tax on it? No way. Too late. They can never turn back the clock. Social media is here to stay and nothing people like them can do about it. Obama won the election thanks to social media. That’s a good thing. His victory has in some way changed the way black people are perceived in Britain, America, Europe, Asia and in the Arab world, including Israel. I started following Obama way back on Myspace when he was still a Senator. Though, I'm in Britain, I was 100% glad that a black man was contesting for high office. Without social media, a lot of people who voted for him would never have heard his message and neither would they have voted for him. Social media means that individuals have immediate access to communication and information - be it for business, family or pleasure. When I hear people moan about social media, I ask "why the hell are you on it?" ... For your info, Biz Stone and some of his team developed this blogging platform that you are using. Biz Stone and his people also developed Twitter. Social Media - Twitter, Blogging platform, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube is a very, very good time. People around the world can connect with each other in real time. Social Media has done a lot in hastening world development in business, politics, and communication. I remember days when I used to pay over £800 per month to that British Telecom for my business fax line. This was before the days of email. Apart from my press releases and Google Adwords campaigns, my marketing cost is almost zero. I can get on Twitter or Facebook and message biz contacts in anywhere in the and at anytime without incurring any cost or hassle. Social media is a good thing and the brains behind it are revolutionaries and most be worshipped. Are you hearing me? Worshipped. Prof Susan Grenfield and people like her must stop moaning about the social media and get a life. Long Live Social Media.

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  11. I just added your blog site to my blogroll, I pray you would give some thought to doing the same.

    ReplyDelete

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