Is It Naptime Yet

It’s funny what Internet has done. I started blogging 3 1/2 years ago because a friend was, and then slowly, a lot of people started blogging.

Then I joined MySpace around 3 years ago. I was into it at first but slowly I’ve not done anything on there. I heard about Facebook at a friend’s baby shower and joined that also, before it was open it everyone, and you still needed a college e-mail address and I never really got into it.

Now Myspace it out, blogging is in, and Facebook is the busiest thing ever.

I just don’t have time and in a way I feel it’s so artificial.

The Internet has connected us to people we would not see anymore, or who have moved far-away and we want to stay connected with. It gives us instant updates, as long as that person updates often. It’s a gift and a curse.

It causes us to keep up relationships with hundreds of people from our past and present, but really do we need to know every detail of every one’s life? I admit I do get caught up in checking people’s blogs or web pages, so I am not immune to wondering what people are doing.

I know blogging helps us keep up relationships with lots of people, but I think it takes a different effort  when we write about what is going on, the mundane and the exciting and in more than two sentences.

I think I’m a blogging snob.

I read so many blogs, and I love most of them. I love connecting with old friends, but I am selective. I choose blogs of people I find really interesting or really care about. I have about 49 blogs that I follow on my Google reader, but only 20 listed on my blog.  About half are very public blogs and the other half personal blogs of friends I’ve found.

I actually lurk on a lot and never comment. Out of the 49 I follow I only comment on 6-8. Some blogs I read because I find it interesting how different I am from this person I once knew or was friends with. I also like to know what’s going on and read how I relate to the author.

I read a lot of blogs, but Facebook and it’s chaos kills me. It’s such an information overload and I feel like it’s so much of the little things that sometimes the big things are lost. The intimacy of blogging just doesn’t happen.

I also hate the whole friend thing. I’m pretty selective of my friends on Facebook and MySpace. I have like 50. In some ways I wonder if people will remember me, because I have this freakishly good memory in some ways and I worry about being rejected or the person going, “Uh, how do I know you?”, but I also feel like it’s so superficial and so unrealistic to be friends with so many people.

Sure it’s a great way to connect with a lot of people and get the word out, but I just don’t get it and I wonder if there are people you really wish hadn’t found you, but you want to be polite and then you end up inviting them to your wedding or some wonderful life event, when you could care less about them.

I’d just rather have 5 good friends than 100 not so good friends and in my whole life I’ve only had about 5 really wonderful friends because I am such a cautious person and don’t easily open up, but I’ve also been very giving and been burned.

And I’d rather read a real personal perspective of what’s going on in ones life, I like the effort that is put into blogging.

A friend of mine did the 25 random things and mentioned how she loved getting mail. Maybe we should all start writing letters to one another and mail the details of our life to hundreds of people everyday, but that would probably get annoying.

What can I say, I’m a blogging snob.

But if you’re on Facebook will you be my friend?

(I know this was a bit of a random post. Part of me wants to drop of the face of the Internet world, but the narcissist in me says that there are some people who might care about what I have to write and I like to record the fun things the girls do. )

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 8th, 2009 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Craziness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.