Yeah, yeah, it’s tough to get into the swing of blogging again. I’m trying. About 8-10 years ago, I guess, was something like a peak time where I really enjoyed it, for the most part (family members dying notwithstanding, obv), but—and I’ve touched on this a bit before, albeit quite some time ago—that was before the grim spectre of Facebook (and so-called Social Networking in general) cast an enormous shadow over all things Interweb.
And I’m still not feeling that. Yeh, I respond to the peer pressure to an extent. Breaking out of conformist, sheeple patterns of behaviour is difficult for everyone, apparently. I find it disappointing and infuriating, in myself as much as in others. But in the end, Facebook is like fast food. It hasn’t got much taste and the nutritional value is exceedingly poor.
So I’ve been trying to mostly stay away from FB specifically for the last couple of weeks. Although it ostensibly connects you to a much wider circle, the communications are correspondingly shallow, quickfire, lacking in substance and, for me at least, strangely isolating. Worse than that, this ‘on demand’ (an utterly deplorable phrase, to my mind) digital world has made everything seem depressingly small, trivial, disconnected and, well… stupid. People don’t have to physically react to things now. They can just hit a fucking ‘like’ button as a substitute for engagement and interaction. It eschews even the need to drop a comment, y’know. If I post this link on FB, I’ve no doubt a few people will hit the like button but none of them will undertake the inconvenience of typing a reaction on here.
Well, I don’t care about getting ‘likes’. Really. Any chimpanzee can hit a like button if you show them a fucking banana. Very easy trick. I thought we were fractionally more evolved than that. But I’m starting to doubt it.
So, y’know, I’m trying to do the Interweb thing on my own terms. Again. And it may well lead to the deafening sound of tumbleweed, but I’ll take a chance. It feels nicer. Not as good as real life (remember that?!)—but nicer than the Zuckerberg Meat Market.
More later…