Last year Carmen Joy King quit Facebook.
Can you believe it? Why would someone do such a thing? Let’s listen.
In the end, what does all this online, arms-length self-promotion ultimately provide? Perhaps it’s merely one component of the pursuit to alleviate some of the blackness encountered in the existential vacuum of modern life. As Schopenhauer once projected, modern humans may be doomed to eternally vacillate between distress and boredom.
Jelly Helm, read this article and like many people, he is unsure about the value of social networks.
I don’t know how I feel about social networking yet. It’s too early. If my evaluation were based on what’s happening today, I’d agree with much of the assessment of the writer above. It’s often self-absorbed, a time-waste, and in the end may foster more social loneliness than connection.
But it’s early. The electric guitar was created in the 1930s, years before Hendrix or Jimmy Page or Sid Vicious were born.
I love how Helm leaves open the possibility for something grand to happen.
My take is it’s great to make online connections. It tends to happen because you share a common interest. That’s a good place to start. Many online friends you will never meet in person, but some you will. When you take online “friendships” offline, meet in person over coffee or beer, become colleagues and real friends, that’s a big win for social media.
I also think there’s value in closely held social networks. When your friends on Twitter or Facebook reach into the hundreds or even thousands, it’s no longer a quaint little get together. It’s a rock concert. We need the time and a space for both and we need to find our comfort zones. For some it will be all rock concert all the time. Others will seek to moderate.
Word to the Twitter wise: One way to moderate Twitter volume is to use Tweetdeck’s Groups function.
