The leather runs smooth on the passenger seat
This passenger seat doesn't pamper life's complexities
We’re embarking on a big social media push at work at the moment, reaching out to a number of social networking websites in the hope of being more web 2.0. However, all the talk of Facebook, blogs and Twitter has got me thinking: am I a web 1.0 has-been?
Online, I’m passive more than I’m active: I don’t create YouTube videos, I’m reticicent about putting comments on websites, I don’t update my Twitter or Facebook pages regularly, and I’ve left a number of half-dead blogs lying in my wake over the years.
Years ago I was at the cutting edge of the web. In the mid to late 90s my life was online: I developed webpages, was a regular contributor on numerous alt.whatever messageboards and chatted online with IRC. Many of my friends hailed from the internet community and I was at one with the web life.
And yet now I feel as though I’m on the sidelines, quietly observing this giant dialogue. Rather than being involved in web 2.0, I’ve been isolated by it.
Of course, it isn’t too late to catch up. The problem isn’t that I’m a techno-phobe late-adopter. It’s more that I don’t have this overwhelming urge to reach out to other people on the net.
Maybe there needs to be a push towards anti-social networking. I recently joined Snubster and Introvertster but even these post-modern attempts at shunning social media are actually embracing it. How can you have a anti-social networking website that is actually a social networking website in disguise?
I suspect that the problem lies in the fact that at heart I’m a consumer not a producer. If I read an article and disagree with it my first reaction is not to post my thoughts in the comments section but to curse to myself and whoever is in my local vicinity and then turn to the next page.
I was brought up in an age where the elite stood god-like above mere peons like myself: only journalists, broadcasters, writers, politicians, film-makers etc could pontificate and everyone else had to listen. The current online generation doesn’t have the social conditioning that inhibits me from interacting. They genuinely believe it is their right to flood the net with their thoughts and opinons (inane or otherwise).
Being anti-social in the age of social networking is a problem. And I’m trying to overcome it, one blog at a time.