Dollev

After much nagging of a friend of mine, i caved in an became a member of what we call a social network. At least, i think that is what you call them. What i am referring to are websites like MySpace and Facebook. I am not going to tell which one i’m on. I want to keep my social networking identity as incognito as possible. And that alone shows what a daft idea it was to jump on this bandwagon. 

I thought of it as an experiment. Who know what might happen? Well for starters, my friend communicates with me only through the networks. All his normal e-mail are forwards of movies, powerpoint presentations and “save the whales”  petitions. Every direct online communication goes through “that website” and “that website” sents me an e-mail telling me that my friend sent me an e-mail. How convenient.

My friend already made lot of new online friends. I haven’t gained one, although several potential friends have been knocking on my social networking door. They are all of the other sex. And their pictures always have a hint of….
Let me put it this way, what would you think if you saw a picture of a woman who is showing her belly, but hides her eyes behind a pair of sunglasses and her login name is Shady_Susan?

Not that i did not make any precautions. I uploaded a picture of my face (that alone should suffice). I added the loudest raunchiest rockbands in my favourite music list (which makes The Smiths stick out like a sore thumb) and also added that i am in a relationship. Why the hell would R&B loving Shady_Susan want to have anything to do with me? What more does she need to know to make her decide to leave me alone? That my girlfriend used to do Thai Boxing and that she will kick the shit out of both me and Shady_Susan if she ever layed a finger on me? Mind you, that would be the actual truth.

I made my first humble steps on the internet in 1994, by posting a question on the Peter Gabriel newsgroup on usenet. Five minutes later i got the answer from a guy from Canada. I will never forget the joy i felt on that moment. No longer would i have to go to a bar hoping to find a conversation partner who would at least have one thing in common with me. I just needed to hook up on the internet and i would find millions of people who shared my interests. And i did that a lot. I made friends that i still hold dear and contact on a regular basis.

So i don’t need a website to create a social network. I already did that all by myself. And the stupid thing is that social network websites neutralizes the main power of the internet. Because all those potential new “friends” picked me because of my location not because i shared an interest. And since you don’t share anything, conversations turn out to be lame at best.

In fourteen years time, the internet changed from an exciting place into a trailer park.

But who can i blame? Not the corporate bigshots and not Shady_Susan. I am the asshole here. I am the one who is running after every carrot that is dangling in front of my face. I could have been posting on my own freaking blog, i could have been recording radioshows that would entertain my real online friends. I chose to do this instead.

The only thing i can say, is that this also goes for most of my friends. All their blogs have died slow and silently. My inbox is receiving far more spam than e-mails from friends. We all are more interested in what we can get out of the internet than what we can put in. Maybe because we think that what we put in often isn’t worth much to begin with.

In 1994 i discovered the internet and it made me wonder what it would bring. I don’t want to think that it brought me Shady_Susan in the end. It is time to start blogging again and finally find a way to access my Freak Magnet gear more easily. It won’t mean much to the world, but it might mean something to the people i care about.

Related Posts

• No related posts found.