Antisocial Networking
(sometimes gossip, assumptions and the overwhelming ‘everywhereness’ of the web gets to me. This is one of those days. Just unloading a bit so I can move along.)
“… so Molly’s a bit of a twit, isn’t she? If she tries that stunt, everyone will crucify her.” This is nearly verbatim of an email I received this morning.
The above sentence fragment makes quite a few assumptions. And as the old saying goes, “When you assume, you make an ass out of you and me.”
It’s ironic that we have dozens of ways to communicate these days, but in many ways have lost the art of conversation. Somewhere in Facebook, there’s a Molly Someoneorother posting a comment. Elsewhere, an instant message conveys shock at what Molly said. Emails begin flying, a snarky Tweet appears, followed by a cleverly vague Plurk. Molly catches wind of the Tweet, posts a clarification on the forum, the OMG! echoes through IM and we wind back around to Twitter. Meanwhile, somewhere in a virtual world, Molly confronts a Plurker, arguments ensue, fragments of which are carried by the beakful back to the myriad of social network nests.
… and I still have no idea who Molly is.
(yes, that chatter-trail is conjecture, for the point of illustration. But when I questioned the sender of the email snippet, that’s pretty close to what I was told was going on. )
Is cryptic the new clever?
Lori Alden Holuta
Lori Alden Holuta lives between the cornfields of Mid-Michigan, where she grows vegetables and herbs when she’s not writing, editing, or playing games with a cat named Chives.
2 Comments
Kimika Ying
One has only so much free time and trying to keep up with the things which interest you can even be too much. I remember reading an article about information overload in which the writer talked about the importance of “keeping one hand on the faucet handle”. Its proven to be good advice.
I think twitter and the others would end up driving me crazy if I paid attention to them. *plugs my ears with beeswax and keeps on rowing*
Ceejay
*grin* I like that. We each are responsible for controlling the flow of our personal faucet handles!
I personally can’t handle more than Plurk, my personal writing blogs, and the occasional (once a month or so) forays into livejournal. My brain, and my allotted time of leisure per day, are both very limited!