I find it funny that we share our innermost thoughts on Facebook and Twitter, in between links to meaningless quizzes and letting the world know what we had for dinner. Ironically, these meaningless buzzes get more favorable responses than the more serious ones. Posts like “BBQ and beer in the sun” might get thumbs up from 5-6 people, and several replies in the likes of “My mouth is watering” and “Me too! Me too!!” where as someone signaling their early departure from this world would become ignored by most, adding to their feelings of despair and loneliness that inspired the idea in the first place.
The Internet is a fantastic tool. Unfortunately some of the services may appear to alienate people from the world rather than bringing an additional dimension into their existence. Turns out people can get addicted to services like Facebook. Wow. To prove to myself that I am not one of them, I actually “deleted” all my friends from my Facebook account a couple of weeks back. And it is actually not affecting my Facebook experience that much – it still feels a little empty. I’ve had a couple of my mates add me as their friend again, which is fine. I got rid of the meaningless blabber from people I’m not at all friends with though, but still appeared as such on my Facebook. Not that I’m not friendly with them… but most of the 450+ contacts I used to have on there are nothing but stray acquaintances, people I’ve met through work or others.
True enough, I have bonded partly through Facebook and made a proper friend this way. And it’s been a fun way of keeping in touch with certain people that I have less contact with than I would prefer. Still though, it doesn’t feel like there is anything missing when I log on. I still get a few updates from people, mostly about stuff I don’t really care about – well at least now that I’ve added a couple. The biggest change is that there are never anyone online to chat with. Not that it matters, because I never used the Facebook chat anyway, because I think it sucks. If I want to chat online, I’ll use Skype or MSN Messenger.
Twitter though, is a little more fun. I actually use Twitter to change the appearance of my blog, you may have noticed. Adding a personalized message to my blog was actually the reason I wanted to use Twitter in the first place. Oh, and it was fun to start following Arnold Schwarzenegger on there – although his talks and meetings with legislators about the budgets for California doesn’t really concern me that much, and he rarely tweets about anything else it seems.
Nowadays I get the impression every website needs to have a socializing aspect. Be it a forum, a chat, whatever. Even webshops include this in their approach to the customer, by providing user generated content such as comments to products or articles, ratings, user reviews etc. And it feels so much safer buying a product or service online, when you can read what boygeorge81 has to say about it.
I wonder where this will take us in the end. I think there will be another dimension added pretty soon, of voice and/or video stream through the social web services. Facebook becomes the “Big Brother” of amateurs, allowing anyone to cover any situation they want on webcam and publishing it online. I bet there will appear adult sites where you need to pay to be a member, and where all the content is generated by its users, using the “Big Brother” idea. Someone is bound to make some money out of this.
We need more than this though. We need the physical impressions left on us by other people. Sometimes, we need other people to sneeze in our face and infect us with a flu or a cold. We need touch, smell, sound – proper sound, not through a telephone or Skype. Whilst online sex might be exciting, nothing beats the real thing. We need each other.
I am getting all of these realizations lately, being in a long distance relationship myself, that is currently not at its best. I know my girlfriend is worried about what this is doing to me, she worries that I spend more time online than with my friends in the real world. She might be right, to some extent, that I have chosen to spend time online that I would spend doing something else if it weren’t for her. I think the case is so for her as well, and it actually makes me feel good every time she tells me she can’t spend time with me online because she is going somewhere to do something with her friends. We’re internet addicts, though, the both of us – we use the internet for whatever we can. I guess our generation is the first generation that had the opportunity to embrace the possibilities of Internet from an early age. Thus, this comes natural to us, even though it might not be a natural thing. I wish I knew how to explain this better.
The last week or so we haven’t been in touch at all, we agreed to stop communicating online for a little while. For the most part it’s been quite okay, I’ve been forcing myself to do stuff I would normally not do, to fill my time with interesting tasks for myself. I’ve been better at visiting my friends than I have in a long while, I’ve been working out a little (mostly walking the dogs etc) and I haven’t spent time doing work at all, for a change. I’ve reconnected with my ex – partly, anyway. At least we can spend a little time around each other without going nuts. We can still talk about anything and everything, too. At certain times it has been tough though. Sitting on the bus, watching other couples. Seeing kids walk hand in hand in the park. Singer/songwriter songs on the radio. Music she sent me appearing at random on my iPod while I walk the dogs. At night. The mornings.
I know she reads my blog from time to time, so I’m guessing she’ll read this at some point, too. And agreeing on the “silence” and then blogging stuff or posting Facebook updates… feels like I’m breaking the silence, somehow. Well, she actively breaks it too, if visiting my blog and reading it. If she doesn’t, then I don’t. I mean, I can say anything I want to her if she’s not around, and it will not make me breech the silence, right? And she hasn’t posted anything on her Facebook, so I guess that’s the only arena she beats me at. Does it matter? It’s not a contest. I tried poking her on Facebook last night, just as a friendly nudge. She hasn’t received my last poke yet, so I couldn’t. Bummer.
I wish I knew the secret to long distance relationships, and the secret to online socializing. I think I know some of the basics in each, heck, I think I’m even at an intermediate level. I’m actually quite good at both, when I think about it proper. And these last few weeks have made me better at relationships with my friends, too. I feel happier, more self assured. I’ve sorted out a lot of small things that have been bugging me for a long time during this period, and it hasn’t even been hard.
Imagine that. And here I am, sharing my innermost thoughts on my blog, for the whole world to see if they want. Feel free to comment…
It’s nice to be able to do something to make myself feel great, which also benefits those two little buggers, I’ll tell ya! And maybe, just maybe, if I am really, really lucky, someone will do like in that old Stevie Wonder song – 
It is the same way with this blog. I have some ideas as what would be great to put here, and then again, I have this feeling I would manage to put the wrong ideas down. So here we go, another pointless ramble on my rather meaningless self-battering. It’s funny though, how this would’ve driven me up the wall two weeks ago, and makes me laugh today.