In Your Facebook!
Even though I spend a lot of time surfing the Internet, I’m behind the curve when it comes to online social networking sites. For those of you who don’t know, a social networking site is a place you can go to on the Internet to avoid having actual face-to-face or telephonic contact with other people. It wasn’t until last year that I created a MySpace page, which I did only in the hope that some Asian nymphomaniac would see my profile and realize how fabulous I am. It worked—sort of. Hundreds of women wanted to show me nude pictures of themselves (for a price), and many others wanted to help me enlarge my penis—but not in the way that I’d hoped.
Just when I was getting ready to update my MySpace page so that it would no longer look like a learning-impaired chimp designed it, I read that MySpace is sooooo 2006. Facebook and Twitter are now the dominant social Web sites—for the moment. I have a Facebook page, but haven’t done anything with it. I’ve toured other people’s Facebook entries, and frankly, I’m amazed at the amount of dull, trivial information that people post about themselves. I don’t know about you, but I don’t give a rat’s ass that someone had lunch at Taco Bell, their Chihuahua has hemorrhoids or that they just finished watching a super-funny rerun of “Two and a Half Men.” I mean, really.
On the positive side, these sites serve nicely as digital photo albums. They allow your friends and family to see the cute pictures you post of your kids at the beach, or of your pet badger playfully mauling your neighbor’s cat. But there are a couple of formerly revered concepts known as “privacy” and “dignity” that have been seriously eroded by the “put yourself on the Web” craze. Pubescent children are now posting their most intimate secrets online, along with photos of themselves wearing nothing but a smile. That’s just wrong. I would never put online the pictures and videos I’ve made of myself having sex. It would embarrass not only me, but also Marsha, my blow-up doll.
And then there’s Twitter. Twitter is like Facebook for ADD sufferers. Got a severely limited attention span? This site’s for you. Twitter limits text entries to 140 characters, so that users (mercifully) can’t blather endlessly about how poor little Sarah accidentally peed in her tutu during her third-grade ballet recital. The text limit is a double-edged sword, however, since it forces Tweeters—or “Twits,” as I prefer to call them—to write in the obnoxious shorthand of text messages. (By the way, I can understand the need for abbreviations when thumbing away on handheld devices, but if you’re writing me an email on a computer, don’t use “u” for “you” and “r” for “are.” As a licensed professional writer, I abhor such butchery of the language.)
Even aging politicians are climbing on the Twitter bandwagon. One-hundred-year-old Sen. John McCain began Tweeting during last year’s presidential campaign after he told the press that he thought an Internet was something used on a fishing boat and a Blackberry was just an edible fruit. (Okay, I just made that up.) But to give him a hipper, less out-of-it image, McCain’s handlers gave him a PDA and he began posting on Twitter. One of his recent posts reads: “Getting my new car today @12:15 pm - excited about my Ford Fusion Hybrid!” Why don’t you post something interesting, John? Fool around on your scary robot wife and Tweet about that.
(Readers, check out Sen. Charles Grassley's hyper-illiterate Tweets. If you can decipher them, let me know.)
I wonder if President Obama’s security team will ever let him have a personal Twitter account. What would his Tweets be like?
“Just killed a fly with lightning-fast reflexes while on TV. Cool.”
“Finally got acceptable health care reform bill. Next--Middle East peace. LOL!”
“Discovered ability to walk on water at pool today. M and kids are psyched!”
Just when I was ready to write off these sites as yet another modern time-waster that increases social isolation rather than alleviates it, I read that they served as invaluable information conduits during the aftermath of the Iranian presidential election as protesters took to the streets. During the government crackdown, people were able to post their observations, photos and video clips of the events for the world to see—until the government shut them down. Who knew that sites like Twitter could become tools for political protest and surrogates for banished journalists?
So I guess these sites can serve an important purpose after all. I’m relieved. Now I can get back to writing about truly important things: Had lunch at Taco Bell. Did laundry and found missing $5 bill. Cleaned up cat vomit off sofa…
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