Updates
A couple things:
1. This site got a minor face lift, which it really needed. Everyone knows that when it comes to actual content, I hold Web 2.0 standards and legibility in high regard. This site does not qualify, though, since it is devoid of any "real" content and exists to perplex more than to inform. So I will make no effort -- ever -- to make the font bigger, label any of the links, or create an appropriate visual hierarchy to organize the "information," although I will tell you that you can ALWAYS find out what something is by mousing over it and looking at the little tool tip that pops up. Just explore, you're poking around in someone else's head anyway. And no, you're not allowed to zoom in to read it.
2. I got a Twitter account. Go ahead, laugh. I wouldn't care about Twitter except that it neatly integrates into the sidebar of blogs, giving a convenient channel for one-line thoughts that don't contain enough to be turned into real posts. It will help clear my head, and I'll post tour blurbs to it too. It also allows me to get headlines and miscellaneous snark easily and efficiently. Follow if you desire. I still refuse to join Facebook, because it's creepy, evil, intellectually vacuous, and dehumanizing. Twitter could be intellectually vacuous, since it intrinsically prohibits depth, but I like to think of it as a challenge of conciseness.
1. This site got a minor face lift, which it really needed. Everyone knows that when it comes to actual content, I hold Web 2.0 standards and legibility in high regard. This site does not qualify, though, since it is devoid of any "real" content and exists to perplex more than to inform. So I will make no effort -- ever -- to make the font bigger, label any of the links, or create an appropriate visual hierarchy to organize the "information," although I will tell you that you can ALWAYS find out what something is by mousing over it and looking at the little tool tip that pops up. Just explore, you're poking around in someone else's head anyway. And no, you're not allowed to zoom in to read it.
2. I got a Twitter account. Go ahead, laugh. I wouldn't care about Twitter except that it neatly integrates into the sidebar of blogs, giving a convenient channel for one-line thoughts that don't contain enough to be turned into real posts. It will help clear my head, and I'll post tour blurbs to it too. It also allows me to get headlines and miscellaneous snark easily and efficiently. Follow if you desire. I still refuse to join Facebook, because it's creepy, evil, intellectually vacuous, and dehumanizing. Twitter could be intellectually vacuous, since it intrinsically prohibits depth, but I like to think of it as a challenge of conciseness.
Labels: Personal
posted by M. Weed at
12:10 AM
3 Comments:
I already zoomed in to read this :)
Hey Matt, I just read your post on Facebook and I thought it was excellent, particularly your take on community, since many around us are actively thinking about it and have had some conversations the ways we communicate and express our thoughts among us. All this came about because Lauren and I did not go to a birthday party because we were not “invited” but was assumed that we would see the invitation in our friend’s profile, not realizing that Lauren and I don’t even have internet less facebook. (I’m posting illegally from my work). This event sparked some great conversations as to what constitutes a community and what are the “rules” of it, meaning, what kind of awareness does the community have of itself concerning what tools of communication are “allowed” for real interactions to happen.
My own thoughts are similar to yours in that I felt that Facebook does not allow for any compromising among its participants. I think you wrote it as “vicissitudes”. I will update when I want to, I will read your profile when I want to and I will respond to any comments when I want to. I will choose my image along with my words in such ways that they align and represent the person that I desire to be in the non-virtual world as well as the person that I wish to be perceived as in the virtual world. I have found the most connection with people when I’m forced to think about the other person’s needs and wants in contrast with mine.
But what do you think of the argument that facebook can act as a hyper stylized e-mail that connects previously “none-virtual” friendships that are now forced to be virtual (meaning that if communication is only possible by using e-mail, why not use more than that?) This is the most common response that I get as the reason why some use facebook.
Ok I will stop here.
Yeah I hear similar response arguments when I complain about Facebook. Most people say "I like being able to see what my old friends are up to now"... but I don't think that Facebook really has the power to revive relationships which are already dead or neglected. It really only transmutes them into some kind of voyeuristic consumption.
There are some good stories about renewed contact, but I think they are far less common than stories like yours, where virtualization has short-changed people and caused more problems that it's worth.
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