Sunday, August 30, 2009

Non-Fiction: Web Two-Point-Oh No

Bringing Social Back: Putting the Social Back into Social Networking (and failing miserably)

A Vampire Wars clan grab has resulted in an influx of new Facebook friends and I once again wade into the wilds of social interactions and practice my questionable social skills on actual people. My success so far has been questionable. Most of the time, a comment from me will either stop the conversation dead or cause a period of silent confusion followed by the group politely pretending I am simply not there. So far I've been fortunate and have avoided actual confrontations and outright malice but let's face it: I'm someone people enjoy removing from their network with great haste and passion and I have the constantly declining friend count to prove it.

To better understand where I could improve my people skills, I occasionally take a long view of my posts here as a whole and try to interpret this material objectively as if seen through the eyes of a complete stranger. A frightening exercise to be sure and one in which usually results in a sweaty sprint back to Gawker. Nonetheless, looking at my posts in concentrated doses, I can almost envision the confused expressions and almost literally hear my readers rifling through behavioral rationalizations as they struggle to understand why someone would post what I post and write what I write. In an effort at full disclosure and to save everyone involved a small amount of time, I can almost completely assure you that these past purported labellings of moi are not entirely accurate:

1. extraterrestrial
2. retarded
3. mentally ill
4. dangerous
5. douche-bag (pending)
6. from another country, possibly France

I dunno, maybe Web 2.0 just isn’t for me. Maybe I should go back to limiting my human interactions to what I was comfortable with, fighting anonymous strangers on Vampire Wars, smiling at strangers on public transportation and pretending that the people who wait on me are my friends.

Not everything fun on the Internet has to revolve around other humans. I can still make those Living Social lists about what five items I have in my pockets and fill out those About Me surveys that no one reads. The What Kind Of Disease Are You… quizzes alone could fill up a lifetime of free time. No worries here, I will be fine:)

Does anyone have Diablo Cody’s Twitter feed?

No comments:

Post a Comment