I have a love hate relationship with social media. On one hand, it is a great way to connect with people. A blog (such as this one) is a great way to get your amazing, insightful, funny, well thought out, amusing, coherent, amazingly insightful, comedic words out to an adoring public. Facebook is for catching up with all of your family and cool friends from High School, the Marine Corps, college, that restaurant you worked at after you got out of the military, the Sci-Fi book club, the fantasy book club, haiku club, church, Cub Scouts, kindergarden, that guy you met at the DMV, and all those people from your past lives. Twitter, I understand, is another way that you can get your important thoughts out there into the digital ether: I'm awake - brushed my teeth - sat on the couch - I like Spongebob - walking to the kitchen - ran into the wall 'cause I was tweeting - I like cereal - lol, poured milk on the floor while I was tweeting - lmao, I didn't cry, omg, I am so 'effin funny.But I don't think that social media is good for anal-retentive, megalomaniacal, neurotic, self-deprecating, narcissistic, aggrandizing, delusionary, wanna be writers. Every day I wake up and check to see who commented about my latest masterpiece. I am usually disappointed. Not in the quality of the response, but the entire lack there of. I keep expecting to hear that some entity has discovered my writing and wants to offer me a ludicrous sum of money to be clever for a living. "We have decided to make you king and arbiter of all things snarky (but not too snarky) and witty." Alas, it isn't to be. So I will just continue to write for me, and whichever of you enjoy my particular brand of whining… I mean, clever repartee. (I do not sound like a 16 year old girl who writes in her diary about being unloved and how unfair life is!)
The other thing that is kind of a bummer about social media in general is that it is a party that every one is invited to. You show up hoping to hang out with all of your cool friends, but instead you are surrounded by every loser you ever met. That weird distant cousin with crossed eyes and bad breath, the overly touchy guy from high school, the guy from the Marine Corps who you secretly suspect of having cannibalistic tendencies, youth pastors, and all sorts of other social misfits. I was trying to talk to my friends Curtis, John and Joel about this the other day, but they keep accidentally un-friending me (they really need to work the bugs out of Facebook), and when I try to chat with Brooke, Rachel, Mike, and Dave they must just miss my message, because they always go off-line as soon as I say something to them, and when I see Aaron or Josh in church they always get called into a meeting right when we start having a conversation. Oh well, at least I have you right? Hey where are you going? COME BACK!
