I'm going to stay right here.
One of the things that has been disappointing with the development of social media is the way in which everything has become fragmented and dispersed. I have friends that post across combinations of Facebook, Google+, Twitter and several blogs. In addition, nobody is having conversations any more, other than about trivia, because, I suspect, no-one is focussing their energy and attention in one place, but instead are too busy either trying to read what other people write, or to produce writings for others to consume.
This whole thing of connecting across the internet seems to have pretty much broken now.
It isn't just the blogosphere either. Harmony Central was for years the largest music forum on the planet. They had problems scaling the v-bulleting software that they used to cope with the traffic, so made one aborted attempt to transfer the whole thing to another forum package, but it was so badly broken they had to revert. Eventually they couldn't keep the old software running and migrated to another new forum format that's functional, but really lousy *by comparison*. Suffice to say, HC is now a shadow of its former self in terms of posting and content. And this situation is not unique to them either.
Maybe it's part of evolution, but sometimes we're so busy trying to grab something better that we lose the good things we already had.
In other news, nostalgia ain't what it was.
I feel torn between all the social media stuff. Facebook is where I connect with most people, but it's become a cluttered mess, with lots of annoying fluff. I'm tired of having my finger in every new social media offering. But I'm finding it difficult to choose between options, particularly since my contacts are spread across them as well.
ReplyDeleteAnd my blog... *sigh*. I wish I felt more inspiration. Started writing a post last night. Stalled. Started another one tonight (on the social media subject). Stalled. Alas...
Possibly one of the biggest problems in writing a blog FOR ME has been that I can no longer write everything that comes into my head, and it may be the same for you. It's not possible to describe the problems one faces in church, the way one feels about various situations, struggles with sin etc etc.
ReplyDeleteOne might ask why someone would blog. For me, I have never tried to create great articles (successful there then!) and generally cannot get on with blogs written for consumption - they give me visual indigestion, and I rapidly tire of the attempts to write clever stuff. The Verge (or at least that article linked by Johanna on facebook) is an example: all flattering twaddle. The thing that attracted me - real people writing about real things that they'd thought, felt and seen personally - were what seemed to validate blogging.
I guess sometimes we just change anyway.
Facebook is where I 'touch' people, but with just a couple of exceptions, have no real relationship or meaningful communication. It's just slightly more interactive than email. From a situation I know of recently, someone pointed out that communicating through facebook doesn't make any real difference, and that's generally true, which is why some people ONLY want to permit comms that way, and give you the cold shoulder in real life.
BTW thanks for commenting, Marc. ;-)
ReplyDelete