I've been thinking recently about the whole social networking thing. It's an obsession ... one that I freely admit to having, as would countless others. My journey through Facebook has been probably fairly typical: join to see what all the fuss is about, start adding applications like there's no tomorrow, get obsessed with (in no particular order) Mafia Wars, Farmville, Frontierville, Farm Town etc ... spend hours trawling through looking for people that you know, or once knew, spending every waking moment thinking about what next to do on your farm/frontier/mafia. You then add total random strangers just so you can get that extra mafia member or farm neighbour, seeing your wall fill up with their requests and status updates, regularly having in excess of 100 game requests .. they need this duck, or that bar of soap, or a particular car part and so it just goes on and on and on. You download the app to your phone because you just can't live without it when on the move. Then the light dawns ... it's really not all that important. Doris's life isn't going to fall apart if you don't like her status, Arthur isn't going to have an embolism if you don't log on to the (mostly never working properly) chat*. You begin to realise that getting to level 650 in Mafia Wars isn't really going to make you feel fulfilled and so what if your frontier has become wildly overgrown. You start to block applications ... no I really DON'T need 50 gazillion requests from people for stuff in Cafe World. You realise quite how public your life is so you start making exceptions lists, you finally make your profile private, you de-tag yourself from the most horrendous photos that the distant cousin you can't remember the name of took of you at that ordeal of a birthday party that your significant other insisted on you attending and just had to upload to his Facebook profile along with the other 250 photos he took that night. You start removing application requests from your wall ... because it's YOUR wall dammit and you only want what you want on it. You become sick of the notifications on your phone but still secretly enjoy having a quick look at status updates every now and then. You then decide, finally, that you need a little bit of anonymity so you keep your Facebook to ostensibly keep in contact with those old school mates that you haven't seen for 20 years but had to add last year ... yes, you know, the ones that you couldn't stand when you went to school with them but somehow, 20 years on, they are suddenly wonderful people. Then you sign up for Twitter And the cycle begins again! *the author would like to point out that Doris and Arthur are fictional characters and no cyber personalities were harmed in the writing of this blog. By Alison Tanner Plusnet Customer Support.
Social Networking and all that malarky