#1041 Un-Following

I once said I would never get a cellphone, largely because I found people using cellphones rude and their use intrusive. I’m saying the same thing now about Facebook and the like.
BTW, I now use a cellphone all the time.
I suppose the biggest question I have to ask about the whole social networking thing is, are these people feeling less lonely? The biggest complaint about modern society once was that people were isolated and alienated by the hubbub of the daily rat race.
Nuclear families, living in suburban homes, separated by walls, buried in the bowels of their TVs. Social networking proposed to change all that. You could be connected to your friends 24/7. You could post your whereabouts on Twitter, summarize your day and share your digital photos on Facebook, and generally peel back the layers of privacy to even the most marginal of your acquaintances.
Is it working? I’m not sure. I see two friends walking together down the street and they both have their iPhones or Blackberries out tweeting to someone else. They spend so much time chronicling their day they forget to live their day.
New social anguish has kept pace with technology as well. The web is filled with horror stories of people being publicly “unfriended.”
Another objection. Friend is not a verb. You can’t “friend” someone. You befriend them. You can’t unfriend someone either.
At least the kids don’t enemy people. That would sound too much like an orderly with a large syringe of warm soapy fluid. Yeah I’m going to enema Mr. Jones in 2-b.
So now rather than gradually drifting apart as friends do, or never speaking another word to someone and they don’t know why, ex-friends publicly unfriend each other on Facebook.
Social Un-networking is the new teenage torture.
The other reason I won’t twitter or join these types of things is I won’t be a “follower.” “So and so is a follower of this blog.” “He has so many followers on Twitter.”
Sorry, not for me. Subscriber? Yes. Interested party? Okay. Follower? Never.
It’s feels too much like the Twitter equivalent of Dittohead.
TwittoHead?
America, ya gotta love it.