Thought this was a good song for this post!!! The Facebook Song...
So I was watching a girlfriend of mine going through constant frustrations this week regarding a douchebag guy she met that wasn’t texting her back (which all of us have been through). It first angered me, and then got me thinking about how cell phones and technology in general has been both a curse and a blessing. Texting, Facebook, Twitter, or BBM messages are starting to replace the common phone call or face to face contact that you want from that new interest, current partner or from anyone really! EXCELLENT!!! Three more ways to reject a human being and three hundred more excuses we have to think of as to why we aren’t hearing from someone!!!! Thanks!
Life is SO accessible now and we are all expecting this instant gratification because we KNOW that people have their phones on them ALL the time, or have the Internet accessible at their fingertips. I mean you can write an email or text when you are going to the bathroom if you wanted too! When you take a closer look at texting, BBM, and cell phones in general, you don’t see many people around this world walking around without a cell phone in hand. It’s almost like you have to be on your phone to avoid looking like you don’t have any friends. LIKE JEEZ. Such losers right? I mean heaven forbid that you are alone and sitting there without something to make you look like you aren’t a complete loner. Or maybe it’s because in our world today we NEED to have stimulation and HAVE to be talking to someone or doing something to alleviate that two minutes of potential boredom. We can have 100 texting and 10 BBM conversations going, while shopping, and TALKING on the phone. Crazy huh?? And if we don’t get a message back right away our brains go into overload and we go crazy analyzing the shit out of the situation! OMG...did he get in a car accident? Is he asleep? Is she on her period and is mad at me? Did he meet someone else? Maybe she fell asleep? BAHHH! I personally think that these new ways of communicating are taking away from actually learning HOW TO COMMUNICATE face to face and it’s creating laziness in trying to form proper relationships (and the English language!!). People rely too much on texting then phone calls which really doesn’t allow for much connection to be formed. I personally got involved in two “texting” type relationships in the past and let me tell you…they are stupid. All it is is one person (OK me) creating feelings and a fake reality in their head based on the perceived emotion and tone of the message. There is so much room for misinterpretation and misperception within a text message that you can’t possibly form a solid foundation for a friendship or relationship that way.
MARCO: hey
LIANNE: hey...what's up?
MARCO: Nothing much. Good to meet you last night. What u up too?
LIANNE: Just getting ready to go to my girlfriends house.
MARCO: What? You never told me you were a lesbian.
LIANNE: I know. Because I'm not dumbass.
Texts are really in existence to generate a quick message or two, not entire conversations. And I’m not saying that I’m not guilty of this, as I too find it easier to send a text then have an hour conversation (because you can do stuff while you’re “talking”), but it needs to be done in moderation. And now even when you do meet someone in person (partners or friends), people interrupt you to take a phone call, text, or surf the internet, completely distracted from the company in from of them. It doesn’t make the other party feel that special I tell ya and it is totally rude!!! I actually told this one guy to get off his phone when I served him his lunch at my café, because his girlfriend was just sitting there trying to get his attention. He sheepishly put his phone down and I hope I embarrassed him. HAH person I don't know!!
On a side note, I’ve also noticed that I actually will type the short form of words now on emails at work and have to catch myself. Like “GF” or “U” or “UR”, like typing those extra two letters is going to take that much more time! It's going to get to the point where people won't even know how to spell at all!! Tsk on me. Tsk on me.
Now regarding FACEBOOK or TWITTER, I can admit that when Facebook first gained its popularity I was super addicted (as was the entire universe)!!!! I loved that we could reconnect with people we hadn’t talked to in years, connect with people across the world, and sometimes even connect with celebrities or athletes! What a great concept! People can see what you’ve been up too, and you can see people’s adventures from around the world. I also loved how we now had a medium to WRITE down every thought in our heads and post it for the world to see…every single minute if we wanted too! An ADHD persons dream, seeming as I bombard people with every thought I have in my head in person! I would be on Facebook at work for like 4 hours a day, to the point where they had to block the site from our computers! Oops. My bad. And it was cool to see how many people you could friend…almost becoming a popularity competition at times! However with this all said, are we really forming a true connection with these people? I mean what kind of connection can we really form if we are only exposing one side of ourselves (which more often then not is the good side of course). The happy, good-looking picture, fun-loving side, that when people find out you aren’t actually so happy inside all the time they’d be shocked. Like nowadays there are pictures you take and then there are pictures you take for Facebook. It’s almost a false reality being portrayed and remains on surface level unless you know some of the people really well already. My friend just mentioned to me that Facebook is not all what it seems and that’s true. Even for myself. It’s scary to expose our truth and risk being judged. And this goes for when you meet someone in person too, however with Facebook you are able to display a one-sided portrait to a larger audience.
And on another note...Facebook can help or hinder your dating life!! If you go on a date for instance, and you add that person to Facebook, they will have access to all your information...information that you were maybe going to tell them in person about. Why bother going on dates anymore to get to know someone if they have all the information at their discretion??! Blah. I’m not denying that it is a great networking tool and that there are some good sides to this social medium, but I thought I’d throw around another perspective on it. And how the hell do you work TWITTER???! It’s like Facebook statuses times 1000000!!! I have an account open but have no clue how to use it and honestly still don’t understand the need for it. If you don’t constantly say something your message will get lost in the shuffle. It’s like those bunches of fish at Canada’s Wonderland you see trying to fight to get to the top for the food we throw! WAIT SEE ME! SHIT…WAIT SEE ME! SHIT…HOLD ON! I’M GOING TO SAY SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN SO YOU CAN SEE ME!
Anyways…that’s my rant tonight. I need to get to sleep so I can get up for the Royal Wedding!!!! AH! So exciting!! Night night everyone.
Life is SO accessible now and we are all expecting this instant gratification because we KNOW that people have their phones on them ALL the time, or have the Internet accessible at their fingertips. I mean you can write an email or text when you are going to the bathroom if you wanted too! When you take a closer look at texting, BBM, and cell phones in general, you don’t see many people around this world walking around without a cell phone in hand. It’s almost like you have to be on your phone to avoid looking like you don’t have any friends. LIKE JEEZ. Such losers right? I mean heaven forbid that you are alone and sitting there without something to make you look like you aren’t a complete loner. Or maybe it’s because in our world today we NEED to have stimulation and HAVE to be talking to someone or doing something to alleviate that two minutes of potential boredom. We can have 100 texting and 10 BBM conversations going, while shopping, and TALKING on the phone. Crazy huh?? And if we don’t get a message back right away our brains go into overload and we go crazy analyzing the shit out of the situation! OMG...did he get in a car accident? Is he asleep? Is she on her period and is mad at me? Did he meet someone else? Maybe she fell asleep? BAHHH! I personally think that these new ways of communicating are taking away from actually learning HOW TO COMMUNICATE face to face and it’s creating laziness in trying to form proper relationships (and the English language!!). People rely too much on texting then phone calls which really doesn’t allow for much connection to be formed. I personally got involved in two “texting” type relationships in the past and let me tell you…they are stupid. All it is is one person (OK me) creating feelings and a fake reality in their head based on the perceived emotion and tone of the message. There is so much room for misinterpretation and misperception within a text message that you can’t possibly form a solid foundation for a friendship or relationship that way.
MARCO: hey
LIANNE: hey...what's up?
MARCO: Nothing much. Good to meet you last night. What u up too?
LIANNE: Just getting ready to go to my girlfriends house.
MARCO: What? You never told me you were a lesbian.
LIANNE: I know. Because I'm not dumbass.
Texts are really in existence to generate a quick message or two, not entire conversations. And I’m not saying that I’m not guilty of this, as I too find it easier to send a text then have an hour conversation (because you can do stuff while you’re “talking”), but it needs to be done in moderation. And now even when you do meet someone in person (partners or friends), people interrupt you to take a phone call, text, or surf the internet, completely distracted from the company in from of them. It doesn’t make the other party feel that special I tell ya and it is totally rude!!! I actually told this one guy to get off his phone when I served him his lunch at my café, because his girlfriend was just sitting there trying to get his attention. He sheepishly put his phone down and I hope I embarrassed him. HAH person I don't know!!
On a side note, I’ve also noticed that I actually will type the short form of words now on emails at work and have to catch myself. Like “GF” or “U” or “UR”, like typing those extra two letters is going to take that much more time! It's going to get to the point where people won't even know how to spell at all!! Tsk on me. Tsk on me.
Now regarding FACEBOOK or TWITTER, I can admit that when Facebook first gained its popularity I was super addicted (as was the entire universe)!!!! I loved that we could reconnect with people we hadn’t talked to in years, connect with people across the world, and sometimes even connect with celebrities or athletes! What a great concept! People can see what you’ve been up too, and you can see people’s adventures from around the world. I also loved how we now had a medium to WRITE down every thought in our heads and post it for the world to see…every single minute if we wanted too! An ADHD persons dream, seeming as I bombard people with every thought I have in my head in person! I would be on Facebook at work for like 4 hours a day, to the point where they had to block the site from our computers! Oops. My bad. And it was cool to see how many people you could friend…almost becoming a popularity competition at times! However with this all said, are we really forming a true connection with these people? I mean what kind of connection can we really form if we are only exposing one side of ourselves (which more often then not is the good side of course). The happy, good-looking picture, fun-loving side, that when people find out you aren’t actually so happy inside all the time they’d be shocked. Like nowadays there are pictures you take and then there are pictures you take for Facebook. It’s almost a false reality being portrayed and remains on surface level unless you know some of the people really well already. My friend just mentioned to me that Facebook is not all what it seems and that’s true. Even for myself. It’s scary to expose our truth and risk being judged. And this goes for when you meet someone in person too, however with Facebook you are able to display a one-sided portrait to a larger audience.
And on another note...Facebook can help or hinder your dating life!! If you go on a date for instance, and you add that person to Facebook, they will have access to all your information...information that you were maybe going to tell them in person about. Why bother going on dates anymore to get to know someone if they have all the information at their discretion??! Blah. I’m not denying that it is a great networking tool and that there are some good sides to this social medium, but I thought I’d throw around another perspective on it. And how the hell do you work TWITTER???! It’s like Facebook statuses times 1000000!!! I have an account open but have no clue how to use it and honestly still don’t understand the need for it. If you don’t constantly say something your message will get lost in the shuffle. It’s like those bunches of fish at Canada’s Wonderland you see trying to fight to get to the top for the food we throw! WAIT SEE ME! SHIT…WAIT SEE ME! SHIT…HOLD ON! I’M GOING TO SAY SOMETHING ELSE AGAIN SO YOU CAN SEE ME!
Anyways…that’s my rant tonight. I need to get to sleep so I can get up for the Royal Wedding!!!! AH! So exciting!! Night night everyone.
I totally agree with so much you've said! I find it so annoying to be hanging out with someone while they have their cell phone attached to their ear or can't stop reading this or that text or site. I have a friend who's absolutely addicted to her phone and it drives me up the wall. to the point, where I would love to ban all technology from our visits lol!
ReplyDeleteAs for Facebook and Twitter, it's funny how addicted people can become. The other day I actually started deleting people off my list because we hadn't talked since the day I added them. Twitter seems a little more useful though, except for the annoying tweets you get where peple are telling you where they are - that's just asking for a stalker to come find you! I like that I can get all of my daily news and dog related information in one spot and really find it interesting to see how many people end up leaving Facebook for Twitter.
Keep up the great posts!
Again, another AWESOME blog, Lianne! How is this not in a magazine?! You should be getting paid for this, dammit! Can't wait for the next :) ~MC
ReplyDeleteI agree, money would be a great form of communication :))))
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Brooke!!! And MC! I do agree about Twitter...I just don't know how to use it! hahaha...and you are good about the deleting part. I've done that too but I feel bad doing it!
ReplyDelete