I guess I'm just not hip
Mar. 18th, 2010 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
My latest confession: I hate social media. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, this new Foursquare thing, etc. WHO CARES. I'm an innately private person, and I'd rather have a few good friends than an army of acquaintences, and I can't imagine that anyone would want to know the minutae of my life -- because I know for a FACT that I don't care to know the minutae of most people's lives. LiveJournal is different... it has room for more than minutae, it has room for people to actually express real thought, and be meaningful. And if I don't feel like reading something, I can skip past it. I don't get ALERTED every time someone posts one line of random crap.
I have a plain old cell phone. I can text and make calls. That is all I want. I had a smartphone once, and yes, it was great to be able to check things on the Web or my email, but I'm not dying without that capability. Guess what? It means that when I'm with people, I'm actually WITH them, instead of staring down into my phone like so many people seem to do these days. It's becoming more important to tell 238954923741 people where you are and what you're doing than actually be with the 1 or 2 people you're actually WITH. You don't actually DO anything, you just report that you're doing it... and frankly, isn't it enough to tell people you've done it after it's over instead of updating them real time? Because, again, WHO CARES??? Who finds you that important?
It's just getting totally out of hand, and this latest Foursquare thing that's all the rage is the WORST. There's like no privacy anymore. Dozens of people know exactly where you are at every moment of the day. Why does anyone even NEED that information? I would HATE to be able to be contacted at virtually any point in the day by anyone, because they can see/know I'm available. It's like being on call constantly.
Maybe I'm particularly biased because I'm more of an introvert and I see the increasing popularity of social media as a threat -- because it's sort of like I have to get on the bandwagon or drop out of people's lives completely, which I don't necessarily want to do. But neither do I want to add everyone and their brother to my 'social network' and hear all the crap people I barely know get up to. It could also be that part of my bias comes from the fact that I knew someone who started as normal person who then turned into one of the worst social media whores ever and we parted bitterly and are no longer a part of one another's lives. I think that probably adds to the strength of my hatred of social media, but is by no means the reason for it. Even before that happened I had avoided Facebook and MySpace like the plague.
I FIRMLY believe that one person who cares about you/you care about IRL is more important than hundreds of Facebook friends, most of whom you aren't actually close to. REAL connections are what's important, and it's pathetic to me that so many people don't care about that at all.
So the big hush-hush thing at work yesterday was that my manager is leaving. Sigh. Better than me being fired, but still not great news. He's a really good manager, I like him both personally and professionally, and while I'm happy he's moving on to something he wants to do more, I'm also very wary of what this means for our team. More specifically, what sort of person they'll hire to replace him and how I will get along with this person personally/professionally (because as we all know, asshole/bad managers are the WORST), and more generally, are they going to try to use this opportunity to change our group composition?
This week seems to be crawling by. The last two days I kept thinking/hoping were Fridays. Sigh.
I think I know why I've been feeling particularly tired the last few days. Not only am I kind of an emotional wreck, but Talis has been getting up 2-3 times during the night to drink water. It wakes me up because I'm a light sleeper (and his slurping up water is loud), but what's really irritating is that I usually also have to lean/get out of bed in order to pull him back onto it, because it's too high for him to jump, and he just stands there and whines and whines until I do it. Interrupted sleep is the worst; it makes me feel like I haven't gotten any sleep at all.
While my cousin's here, I'm thinking of taking him to El Gaucho, Steelhead Diner, and Senor Moose. I know, I'm totally obsessed with SM. Maybe after going again on Saturday I'll get over it and won't want to go again so soon w/ my cousin... but I doubt it.
I have a plain old cell phone. I can text and make calls. That is all I want. I had a smartphone once, and yes, it was great to be able to check things on the Web or my email, but I'm not dying without that capability. Guess what? It means that when I'm with people, I'm actually WITH them, instead of staring down into my phone like so many people seem to do these days. It's becoming more important to tell 238954923741 people where you are and what you're doing than actually be with the 1 or 2 people you're actually WITH. You don't actually DO anything, you just report that you're doing it... and frankly, isn't it enough to tell people you've done it after it's over instead of updating them real time? Because, again, WHO CARES??? Who finds you that important?
It's just getting totally out of hand, and this latest Foursquare thing that's all the rage is the WORST. There's like no privacy anymore. Dozens of people know exactly where you are at every moment of the day. Why does anyone even NEED that information? I would HATE to be able to be contacted at virtually any point in the day by anyone, because they can see/know I'm available. It's like being on call constantly.
Maybe I'm particularly biased because I'm more of an introvert and I see the increasing popularity of social media as a threat -- because it's sort of like I have to get on the bandwagon or drop out of people's lives completely, which I don't necessarily want to do. But neither do I want to add everyone and their brother to my 'social network' and hear all the crap people I barely know get up to. It could also be that part of my bias comes from the fact that I knew someone who started as normal person who then turned into one of the worst social media whores ever and we parted bitterly and are no longer a part of one another's lives. I think that probably adds to the strength of my hatred of social media, but is by no means the reason for it. Even before that happened I had avoided Facebook and MySpace like the plague.
I FIRMLY believe that one person who cares about you/you care about IRL is more important than hundreds of Facebook friends, most of whom you aren't actually close to. REAL connections are what's important, and it's pathetic to me that so many people don't care about that at all.
So the big hush-hush thing at work yesterday was that my manager is leaving. Sigh. Better than me being fired, but still not great news. He's a really good manager, I like him both personally and professionally, and while I'm happy he's moving on to something he wants to do more, I'm also very wary of what this means for our team. More specifically, what sort of person they'll hire to replace him and how I will get along with this person personally/professionally (because as we all know, asshole/bad managers are the WORST), and more generally, are they going to try to use this opportunity to change our group composition?
This week seems to be crawling by. The last two days I kept thinking/hoping were Fridays. Sigh.
I think I know why I've been feeling particularly tired the last few days. Not only am I kind of an emotional wreck, but Talis has been getting up 2-3 times during the night to drink water. It wakes me up because I'm a light sleeper (and his slurping up water is loud), but what's really irritating is that I usually also have to lean/get out of bed in order to pull him back onto it, because it's too high for him to jump, and he just stands there and whines and whines until I do it. Interrupted sleep is the worst; it makes me feel like I haven't gotten any sleep at all.
While my cousin's here, I'm thinking of taking him to El Gaucho, Steelhead Diner, and Senor Moose. I know, I'm totally obsessed with SM. Maybe after going again on Saturday I'll get over it and won't want to go again so soon w/ my cousin... but I doubt it.
