perhaps this is silly

But I admit to being a bit lost sometimes during our discussions of all of these social networks.

It's really because I'm not part of any of them. I'm never on AIM unless I'm desperately trying to find someone and all other routes have failed (my last conversation began with: "what?? you're online??!!! are you okay??"). I've never joined the facebook or myspace or anything similar. I've never had a blog, or edited a wiki, or played computer games (before this class). About as interactive as I get is listening to NPR through their website.

Maybe I should look into getting social security.

But seriously. Some of this has to do with what Shock and Awe, tophat1, and Oz have been talking about on their respective blogs--these false identities that the internet lets us create, the ability to carefully craft and edit ourselves and our interactions. I guess I just don't believe that relationships based on such terms are real. Indeed, I can't think of one meaningful conversation I've had on AIM or one serious piece of news that's been passed on to me (through various intermediaries) off the facebook. And while there's some blogs I'll probably follow after this class is over, I'm not planning on setting up my own and boring my friends and family with my less than stellar insights.

One of the big turn-offs (for me) of social software is that I see the sink of time and effort that these (fake) relationships entail. For instance, my sister worries about what her arch-rival in highschool (ironically, one of her facebook "friends") will think of the pictures she's posting from her birthday party last month. She's carefully pruning and selecting for hours--"do I look thinner in this picture or this one?"; "Here I'm kissing Andrew and here James--which one is hotter?" She already used a photo from our summer vacation to pass herself off as me for a couple weeks (while we're twins, this stopped working in real life when we reached middle school). Most people didn't notice, however, until my big brother ratted her out...

I just feel that it's not a real world, and it's not worth the effort to sort out all of the fake politics. I'd rather be myself and worry about how I present that self in real life then worry about how the fake self that I've invented is impressing/not impressing/interacting/not interacting in artificial circumstances. It feels like a much more involved version of Facade, in some ways. Besides, I've got to finish polishing my charm in real life before I try showing it off online!

Further, I'm enabled to take this luddite stance by my friends. My sister keeps me up to date on what's going on amongst my friends from high school, and anyone at Pomona tends to come talk to me in person (or send me an email) if they really want to let me know what's up. So, I'm not really sworn off the medium--I just get other people to use it for me ;).

So maybe this post sounds condemnatory or negative or such groups. I don't mean it to be at all. I think such programs are great in a lot of ways--they keep people in touch and connected who wouldn't go out of their way to be so otherwise. I just made the choice that they're not for me--which puts me, albeit with my own consent, on the outside of a lot of discussions.