In a cyber nutshell…

From Julia London

Thanks to Frank Avila.

Good advice! Shame no one will pay it any attention.

From Funny Shit

THE TWITTERVERSE: Life as little sentences.

Can I condense my thoughts down to 140 characters? Probably, I’m not a deep thinker. Do I want to condense my thoughts down to 140 characters? Not really, but for the purpose of experiencing as many forms of social media as I can, I am trying. I openly admit that I don’t ‘get’ Twitter, and suspect my lack of appreciation may stem from my dislike of texting. I loathe texting; and microblogging – which seems to be a public broadcast version of texting – just doesn’t appeal to me. I have a limited tolerance for new-fangled gadgetry and am happy for phones to just be phones. I don’t feel the need to pressure the poor things into being polyfunctional connective powerhouses. Multimedia interfacing Swiss Army knives with a myriad of applications. I feel so sorry for them. So much expectation from one teensy piece of machinery. (By the way, I do realise that phones don’t have feelings and can never acknowledge my compassion, but I still sympathize with their situation.) (Mind you, a small flash of cognisance would be always be appreciated.)

Back to the Twitterverse. I can see the positives, such as the notifications by news and emergency services. I think that is brilliant. I used to live in the Dandenong Ranges (just outside of Melbourne) and would have loved that information feed during the summer  months when bushfires were a real and present danger. The latest traffic updates might also have a place in my life. Socially, I don’t know many people who tweet but I have chosen to ‘follow’ some strangers who are very witty and admit to lol’ing at their comments.

However, I suspect that there is a finite number of non face-to-face communications in which I can engage. Between phones (landline and mobile), emails, Facebook and dear old snail mail I think I may have reached my personal saturation point. I quietly marvel at those who can juggle a seemingly endless stream of multiform communiques, but wonder at just how much quality content those individuals are capable of generating themselves or assimilating from others? Is quality content the point? (Certainly isn’t as far as my Facebook posts are concerned.)

But it is volume, not content, that is the issue. There weren’t enough hours in the day for me before the cyber world expanded to its current dimensions. It’s all I can do to stay on top of the information avalanche from my present subscribed sources. So I think, as far as Twitter is concerned, I may have to ‘take a powder’. Good luck to those who love it and dwell in it, happily lounging in the shade of its little blue birdie wings; for me it’s just one information stream too many.

THE RISE OF THE HASHTAGGERS. And why I hate them.

I completely understand how long hours spent playing in any form of social media can affect one’s psyche.  A community is developed, bonds are created, emotional energy in invested.The attachment is palpable. The functions and limitations of the preferred media become second nature, the keyboard quickly becomes our voice. An extension of our body that, although utterly false, seems totally logical. Having written and read an endless stream of post we begin to think ‘in format’. Cyber-speak is our second tongue. Emoticons are our online gesticulations replacing the body language we would otherwise require as functioning human beings to interpret the subliminal messages in a face to face meeting. I get it, I am it. I am part of the world wide web of social interaction.

However, I do live in a specific corner of the cyber universe and I have noticed of late a certain cross pollination of media  forms that I find highly irritating. There is a blight on my Facebook landscape. A cross hatching plague spreading through my world and afflicting those I thought were above such attention seeking. I refer, of course, to the insidious hashtag.

The tweeting populace of the planet is legion and growing daily. I am happy for them, they have found like minded people and are forging relationships that they would not otherwise have had the opportunity to initiate. But why can’t they keep their own dialect of cyber speak to themselves? It really doesn’t translate successfully into other media, and likewise the language of other media does not easily transverse the social spectrum.

For instance, emoticons do not work on blogs. I found this out on my debut post when I added a smiley face.It was the creepiest smiley face I have ever seen. It was the evil clown of smiley faces. I realised then that emoticons belong on Facebook and virtually nowhere else. They are part and parcel to the Facebook vocabulary, a valuable visual extension of the written exchange. Only on emails to one’s closest friends can emoticons be added  (which is kind of a shame given the excellent range of possibilities offered by my server).

Hashtags are not applicable outside of the twitterverse. There they serve a function – to catergorise metadata. No such function is served elsewhere. They are either typed out of habit, or as a desperate need for the writer to attract attention to some point they are making. It is a shorthand subtitle that fails miserably. So, my chronic hashtagging friends, I would dearly love for you to exercise some restraint when posting in my beloved Facebook. Henceforth, please stick to the time honoured range of silly emoticons like everyone else!

I AM THE ANTI BLOGGER. Which is like the anti Christ, but with less flames.

Speaking as a Facebook addict, I am not adjusting easily to my recent admission into the blogospere.

I love the speed, immediacy and chattiness of Facebook. The lightning quick rolling conversations that can move to private messages for added intimacy. The wonderful silliness in telling my friends about the trivialities of my life, and the joy of reading their daily musings in turn. The memes, the cat pictures, the occasional bitchslap where you go ‘all capslock’ on someone. I love the control of Facebook, knowing that the only people reading my mindless blather are dear and trusted confidantes. Facebook is the sun-drenched noisy tearoom of cyber space. The clatter of cups, the waft of freshly brewed tea and coffee. Delicate cakes and tiny savoury morsels of yumminess consumed between snippets of gossip.

I was never attracted to MySpace, which now reeks like a truck stop cafe that nobody of interest frequents. A limited menu, dirty plates piled high and the odd scampering of a fat cockroach. I can almost hear the boards being nailed up on the windows and the foreclosed sign being hammered into the ground out front. Twitter is the fast food of the social media world. A drive through micro conversation that doesn’t really satisfy as it can never be upgraded to a full meal. Are Wikis just a poor man’s chatrooms? A small club with limited membership and a single minded ideal? Far too reminiscent of the tedious committee meetings I endured during my ‘community spirited overly involved parent’ phase. All stale bun, weak tea and soggy biscuits. And Virtual Worlds – the cyber smorgasbord of escapism. All you can eat – and when you have had your fill, all your multiple personalities can eat. Then there is the Blog. A rant monger’s paradise, open to all who care to peer through its yellowing net curtains. It is the public bar of social media. Poor lighting, sticky carpet and the heady stench of stale beer.

As my heart clearly belongs to Facebook, I can’t imagine there would be room (a chatroom?) in my life for any other forms of social media. Could I ever be adulterous in my social networking? Am I capable of cyber infidelity? Am I the faithful wife who never types her way into another online bed, or will I be seduced by the delicious narcissism of anonymous ranting?