Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Facebook, Nostalgia, and The Future
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
why you're wrong about facebook
This Jeff Koterba cartoon (2/19/09, if you’re coming to this post late) ran in my newspaper on Saturday and it made my eyes roll so hard, I got dizzy.
Want to sound outdated and left behind? Then smirk about how online social networking is only being done by pathetic losers living sad, sad lives in their mothers’ basements.
Stupid. That’s one reason newspapers are circling the drain—they simply refused to acknowledge the coming Internet tsunami and even now, evidently, they don’t quite believe its power. Maybe if they mock it, it will go away.
I don’t know about you, but my Facebook Friends are interesting, vibrant, involved, accomplished people whose lives are not the least bit sad. They just happen enjoy Facebook. And Twitter. In fact, they may be the opposite of sad and cut off because they have embraced new technology and a changing world.
We share mundane details of our lives sometimes. And sometimes we share links to compelling articles. Good jokes and videos. (Emphasis on good, we hope.) Job leads. Sources for stories. Sympathy. Support. Attagirl and attaboys. We comment on current events. We get creative. The 25 Things fad was creative writing. Now an entertaining little game is running through Facebook that involves creating an album cover. (Haven't received it yet? You will.) It's fun, entertaining, and can exercise a little design muscle. Nothing wrong with that.
Here’s a column from the Washington Post about all the Twittering (I’m not wild for the use of “Tweet” in this context—perhaps I’ll change) that was going on in Congress during President Obama’s speech last night. It’s less patronizing but still a little incredulous. People actually DO this stuff? Like, real people?
I don’t say everyone has to do this stuff but … well, to an extent, I do say everyone has to do this stuff, to stay relevant in a changing society. I know people in PR and marketing who have not mastered it yet. Seems to me they are choosing to become obsolete.
At the very least , everyone needs to understand the place, purpose and power of online social networking before deciding to reject it. And if you do reject it, be aware that you are cutting yourself out of a strata of society—and one that’s not as pathetic as you want to believe.
Want to sound outdated and left behind? Then smirk about how online social networking is only being done by pathetic losers living sad, sad lives in their mothers’ basements.
Stupid. That’s one reason newspapers are circling the drain—they simply refused to acknowledge the coming Internet tsunami and even now, evidently, they don’t quite believe its power. Maybe if they mock it, it will go away.
I don’t know about you, but my Facebook Friends are interesting, vibrant, involved, accomplished people whose lives are not the least bit sad. They just happen enjoy Facebook. And Twitter. In fact, they may be the opposite of sad and cut off because they have embraced new technology and a changing world.
We share mundane details of our lives sometimes. And sometimes we share links to compelling articles. Good jokes and videos. (Emphasis on good, we hope.) Job leads. Sources for stories. Sympathy. Support. Attagirl and attaboys. We comment on current events. We get creative. The 25 Things fad was creative writing. Now an entertaining little game is running through Facebook that involves creating an album cover. (Haven't received it yet? You will.) It's fun, entertaining, and can exercise a little design muscle. Nothing wrong with that.
Here’s a column from the Washington Post about all the Twittering (I’m not wild for the use of “Tweet” in this context—perhaps I’ll change) that was going on in Congress during President Obama’s speech last night. It’s less patronizing but still a little incredulous. People actually DO this stuff? Like, real people?
I don’t say everyone has to do this stuff but … well, to an extent, I do say everyone has to do this stuff, to stay relevant in a changing society. I know people in PR and marketing who have not mastered it yet. Seems to me they are choosing to become obsolete.
At the very least , everyone needs to understand the place, purpose and power of online social networking before deciding to reject it. And if you do reject it, be aware that you are cutting yourself out of a strata of society—and one that’s not as pathetic as you want to believe.
Friday, February 6, 2009
the thing about 25 things
If you are on Facebook, you have been tagged by the current epidemic, 25 Random Things About Me.
Some of us shamelessly embrace this opportunity to reveal little-known facts about ourselves. Others sneer at what this Washington Post writer calls “just another online outbreak of mass self-disclosure and self-importance.”
In this NYT article, editor Telisha Bryan sniffed that she wouldn’t deign to participate.
“ ‘Whatever happened to talking to people face-to-face?” she wrote in an e-mail message. “Since when do we have to give our friends synopses or overviews of our lives? Anyone who wants to know 25 things about me can call me or ask me.’ ”
No, not so much. As another person interviewed from the story pointed out, “I’ve gotten 25 random things notices from people that absolutely fascinated me, but I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t want to be stuck on a bus with them telling me these things.”
Ms. Bryan, the holdout, is the editor of a women’s magazine (a quick Google revealed it to be Cosmo), and the stock-in-trade for women’s mags is TMI and celebrity chatter, so I’m a little confused by her attitude. Why should I consider the details of Jennifer Aniston’s life more relevant than the details of people I actually know? (And yes, I do know the majority of my Facebook friends in some capacity beyond Facebook.)
The NYT writers says, "The idea that real intimacy is achieved by telling 25 people about the first time you saw a horse or the name of your kindergarten boyfriend is, admittedly, worthy of ridicule." But that's so missing the point. Who says this is about intimacy? Totally missing the point, dude. This isn't intimacy, this is entertainment.
People who choose not to participate in things like this do so with a holier-than-you losers attitude, but who cares? I filled out the 25 Random Things and passed it along, and I read other peoples’ and comment on them. Why? Because they’re fun. Lots of fun. They’re fun to write and particularly fun to read.
If I were a smart fiction writer, I would be keeping a file of other people’s 25 Random Things because, you know, you can’t make this stuff up. Each list is full of details that could make a character come alive. (Hm, that would be a cool writing exercise: Take a random 25 Random Things list and invent a character around it.)
I love what my friends choose to write about, love how they choose to write them. Are they one-liners or full paragraphs? Are they boastful or self-deprecating? What do they view as significant moments in their lives, what are they confessing to?
How can anyone find stuff like this uninteresting?
Some of us shamelessly embrace this opportunity to reveal little-known facts about ourselves. Others sneer at what this Washington Post writer calls “just another online outbreak of mass self-disclosure and self-importance.”
In this NYT article, editor Telisha Bryan sniffed that she wouldn’t deign to participate.
“ ‘Whatever happened to talking to people face-to-face?” she wrote in an e-mail message. “Since when do we have to give our friends synopses or overviews of our lives? Anyone who wants to know 25 things about me can call me or ask me.’ ”
No, not so much. As another person interviewed from the story pointed out, “I’ve gotten 25 random things notices from people that absolutely fascinated me, but I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t want to be stuck on a bus with them telling me these things.”
Ms. Bryan, the holdout, is the editor of a women’s magazine (a quick Google revealed it to be Cosmo), and the stock-in-trade for women’s mags is TMI and celebrity chatter, so I’m a little confused by her attitude. Why should I consider the details of Jennifer Aniston’s life more relevant than the details of people I actually know? (And yes, I do know the majority of my Facebook friends in some capacity beyond Facebook.)
The NYT writers says, "The idea that real intimacy is achieved by telling 25 people about the first time you saw a horse or the name of your kindergarten boyfriend is, admittedly, worthy of ridicule." But that's so missing the point. Who says this is about intimacy? Totally missing the point, dude. This isn't intimacy, this is entertainment.
People who choose not to participate in things like this do so with a holier-than-you losers attitude, but who cares? I filled out the 25 Random Things and passed it along, and I read other peoples’ and comment on them. Why? Because they’re fun. Lots of fun. They’re fun to write and particularly fun to read.
If I were a smart fiction writer, I would be keeping a file of other people’s 25 Random Things because, you know, you can’t make this stuff up. Each list is full of details that could make a character come alive. (Hm, that would be a cool writing exercise: Take a random 25 Random Things list and invent a character around it.)
I love what my friends choose to write about, love how they choose to write them. Are they one-liners or full paragraphs? Are they boastful or self-deprecating? What do they view as significant moments in their lives, what are they confessing to?
How can anyone find stuff like this uninteresting?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
life online
This NYT Magazine article about “digital intimacy” is long, but fascinating.
I was particularly interested in what they have to say about Twitter and my favorite part of Facebook, the status updates.
Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.
I don’t Twitter yet, but I do update my Facebook status frequently and enjoy reading the minutia of my friends’ lives.
Of course, many of my friends are writers so their updates are often carefully crafted, which makes them even more fun, but it’s even more than that. As the NYT describes it:
Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.
A pointillist painting. What a wonderful description. And not only do the updates give me a sense of individuals’ lives, but they give me a sense of the whole world, buzzing along one little task and emotion at a time.
I haven’t given up face time for Facebook but frankly, I have more good friends across the country than across my city and if this is how I can stay connected to their lives, it will have to do. And it’s doing pretty well.
In a somewhat related story, this DMN story offers suggestions on how to focus in the multitasking hell in which we all live and work. One suggestion I particularly like is turning your back on your computer when someone is talking to you. I need to do that when I’m on the telephone.
In fact, I seem to have lost my headset and that might be a good thing, since I use it to keep my hands free while I’m on the phone, which means I can screw around on the computer. I’ll need to find it to do phone interviews, but it only allows me to be distracted when I’m not taking notes.
I did a speech last night to a very nice sorority alumni group and one woman told me about a trip to California she took recently. She noticed that there, people have become much more polite and restrained about using cell phones than they are here in Dallas. Evidently, Californians have learned better than to use their cell phones in restaurants. Nice.
I was particularly interested in what they have to say about Twitter and my favorite part of Facebook, the status updates.
Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.
I don’t Twitter yet, but I do update my Facebook status frequently and enjoy reading the minutia of my friends’ lives.
Of course, many of my friends are writers so their updates are often carefully crafted, which makes them even more fun, but it’s even more than that. As the NYT describes it:
Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting.
A pointillist painting. What a wonderful description. And not only do the updates give me a sense of individuals’ lives, but they give me a sense of the whole world, buzzing along one little task and emotion at a time.
I haven’t given up face time for Facebook but frankly, I have more good friends across the country than across my city and if this is how I can stay connected to their lives, it will have to do. And it’s doing pretty well.
In a somewhat related story, this DMN story offers suggestions on how to focus in the multitasking hell in which we all live and work. One suggestion I particularly like is turning your back on your computer when someone is talking to you. I need to do that when I’m on the telephone.
In fact, I seem to have lost my headset and that might be a good thing, since I use it to keep my hands free while I’m on the phone, which means I can screw around on the computer. I’ll need to find it to do phone interviews, but it only allows me to be distracted when I’m not taking notes.
I did a speech last night to a very nice sorority alumni group and one woman told me about a trip to California she took recently. She noticed that there, people have become much more polite and restrained about using cell phones than they are here in Dallas. Evidently, Californians have learned better than to use their cell phones in restaurants. Nice.
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