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What happened to good old-fashioned social interaction?
Do you remember when the only medium for social interaction was the spoken word?
Nowadays it seems all this new technology has made it possible for everyone and their Nan to forge identities in cyberspace in order to escape their arid social life. There are MySpace superstars who have more MySpace plays, friends and views than Tinchy Stryder but somehow no one has heard of them and if they released a single tomorrow, it wouldn’t sell more than three copies (mum+dad+nan=3 copies). Why? Because these punks forge all their plays and views by joining like minded cyber addicts doing exactly the same thing, searching for acceptance in the world of user generated content by joining trains and play generators which ultimately result in them lying to themselves, narcissistic indeed. Ridiculous to say the least I don’t know how some have the time or patience to partake in such mundane activity, I personally don’t think spending in excess of twenty-four hours on MySpace just to get views and add random people healthy nor constructive. How’d you expect to catch a meal when you cast your net into a sea of like-minded fishermen casting their net in the same area of sea? You’ll just end up catching nets of people selling to you rather than consumers. Why not venture into unchartered waters in order to find rare and undiscovered species which require you to employ new methods to catch a meal?
There are so many ways to become noticed and almost all involve getting the fuck outta your dark dungeon.
It seems like since the advent of telephones, which eventually gave birth to the mobile telephones, and sms text messages, which lead to smartphone’s such as Blackberry Curves, BBM, mobile internet and email, which lead to social networking apps on mobile phones and so forth, everyone has become much more accessible. It’s a scary thought to know that if she can’t get me on the phone, she’ll text, if she can’t get me on the text, there’s BBM, if there’s no reply on BBM, there’s MSN (who in their right mind over the age of 16 uses MSN anyway?), no MSN, she’ll email, no email, she’ll poke me on facebook (the intrusive travesty that is the online home of everyone and their Nan. Even the rudebwoys from ‘the ends’ are on there doing the ‘gangsta’ pose in their profile pics), she tweets and finally… If all else fails she may call the Skype. I mean with all this newfound accessibility it’s hard to keep a low profile and stay out of the loop. There’s always someone who knows someone who knows you and if you happen to be on a site like facebook, especially if you get tagged in a picture with someone who everyone knows, you’ll have ten million friend requests within the hour from friends of friends of associates to the people who nod to you and you wonder where you know them from. It all gets a bit much to accept these people you hardly know, let alone add them out of obligation for being audacious enough to request you.
When does it all end?
It doesn’t! You either ignore these people and let them linger in the pending requests inbox, decline their request and continue to do so for eternity in the hope that they get the message or you can just accept these random requests and have millions of people snooping through your information, pictures and friends list adding all the people with nice profile pictures with total disregard for the consequences when the next friends list request victim questions you as to why the ex con whose only claim to fame is having his face on the front page of the Metro a few years ago is adding them. How are you going to explain to them that you added a bunch of random goons that you avoid in every social situation due to their volatile and alcohol induced behavior who all have no courtesy for the unwritten rules of social networking, which clearly state:
Don’t add me if you don’t know me.
I like a lot of others find sites like facebook intrusive. Yes I do post the odd comment and status here and there but some of ya’ll muthafkrs piss me off to the point I feel like deleting you.
Ok so cyberspace is parallel to the world outside xt/html as people take everything personal as everything is based and drawn up using emotive and connective language such as friend, like, love, connect, share, post, join.
People seem to trip over the slightest bullshit i.e. it’s a crime to tell someone not to spam your page. These punks don’t understand that I don’t want to go to that shit rave where everyone acts as if they’re rich but in reality their student loan just got paid into their account. Tell me how she’s going to survive when she spent her rent and food money on a new designer weave which is so technologically advanced that it can even mop your floor and be put in the washing machine or dry cleaned, an over expensive nail job with nails so long that she struggles to use the tiny keys on her blackberry let alone scratch her weave when it’s itching because she’ll either scratch that foreign object off of her head or scratch it out of place, a designer handbag and an outfit that she got on her weekly, I really don’t need no clothes but I think I’m rich, Primark binge that have seen her amass a collection which includes every Atmosphere top in every color way since early 2005.
If it isn’t raves or the spamming shitters promoting some sort of fuckry, it’s people inviting you to play some stupid game. Why the fuck would I want to play a game on facebook? WTF! This site isn’t my fucking life for me to spend all day playing some stupid game or doing fucked up quizzes. I mean WTH! I wonder if you muthafuckers sit on your pc I’m Mac btw glued to facebook. Are you lot fucking junkies!? Loooool
The other annoying thing is group and fan pages. I get so many of the dry requests on a daily and since I get these straight to my berry inbox it fuckin annoys the fuck outta me. The amount I decline on a daily to end up with 50 more re requests. Sometimes I wonder whether ya’ll be so ignorant as to not get the fucking message, my phone pops off and I be thinking it’s a girl and it’s one of your dumb requests. Oh and for the record don’t send me anything in the name of a cause, I don’t want to be depressed reading about starving lil shits in a third world sweatshop, an outbreak of mad cow disease in some third world slum and certainly not anything to do with this:
Let’s sack these social workers because they failed to spot the key signs as the offenders done a bloody good job of covering their tracks.
It’s a waste of my time and yours. I’m sure four people in a group is likely to raise enough awareness for more to be done so keep your lil depressing causes to yourself. Just because the news sucked you in, it doesn’t mean I need to be manipulated in a passive form so fuck off.
Aside from all the bullshit, facebook is quite all right. There’s always the odd encounter with people from your friends list you haven’t seen in years who you happen to bump into in the most random of circumstances. When this happens I always wonder what I’ve done for god to punish me like this. It’s not that I don’t like some of these people but the five minutes of loose, gap-ridden small talk feels like a gruesome five-hour encounter with an estranged aunt I haven’t seen in years. I’m not one to front and act interested but I do engage in pleasantries now and again but as for exchanging contact details, it’s a no no. I hardly answer my phone or reply to telephone messages, why am I going to allow another person to bug me when they already could be lurking on facebook. Weird. Let’s face it, out of two hundred friends, I only speak to ten, not including family (I hardly have any family on there. What’s the point of having them in my list? I don’t want my estranged siblings, aunts and whoever else facebook has spread to see pics of me on the razz with my mates getting up to all sorts. Imagine a family reunion with my aunt saying something like “I see you with all the alcohol and the semi naked girls, I hope you wore protection.” How embarrassing).
If truth be told, I don’t like nor dislike facebook, I simply use it to connect with my friends and share stories. I don’t post ridiculous amounts of pics because I never carry a camera or having anything to show one hundred and ninety people I hardly say a word to. The funniest part of the whole experience is being surprised in a tagged photo that you approved whilst you were out on a tequila fuelled night on the tiles, that’s what I call a stitch up and something to laugh, share and post comments about.
(I think this was written in 2009/10 and I guess I’ll read it back and cringe at how much my outlook has changed in a few hours)
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