by Sarah Morgan on July 3, 2010
In this blog post, Jane Brody, writer for the NYT, tells personal stories on her way to explaining scientific stories – a method of reporting she would not have been permitted in the paper. It makes for a nice change, and it brings you closer to the author. There’s more of a personality behind the communication. Social media is, indeed, personal, as Marc Monseau says here.
But social media can also assist in the speeding up and depersonalization of conversation. I read this blog by AV Flox recently and felt a bit sad at the end of it. She and her commenters bemoaned the way people mix personal niceties with professional business.
One of the surprises that I love in having moved to a more rural area is that people do exactly that. You make eye contact. You chat more. You move a little bit slower. Do I get less done because of it? I don’t think so. Am I happier because of it? Yeah, I am.
What about you? What type of person are you? Do you want the conversation, the chit-chat, the nattering and niceties? Or are you just business?
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by Sarah Morgan on June 22, 2010
This article called “Can You Put a Value on Virtual Relationship” ranks the worth of your online relationships thusly, in order of decreasing importance:
- email contacts
- blog subscribers
- LinkedIn contacts
- Facebook friends
- Google Buzz contacts
- Twitter followers
I would like to respectfully submit that this is utter garbage. For several reasons.
First, because nobody has ever given a hoot about Google Buzz.
Second, because Facebook interactions are more personal, and therefore much more important, than LinkedIn ones.
But third and mostly, because I take massive issue with the concept of “virtual relationships”. There are no “virtual relationships”. There are relationships - and there are stronger and weaker ones. I have a weak one with someone I see occasionally and I have a stronger one with someone I know casually and I have a much stronger one with a dear friend. But their strength or weakness has nothing to do with where I see them occasionally, or where we have our long and deep conversations. They might be through a computer or they might be at a picnic table. Who cares? The setting isn’t what determines their strength, or their “value”.
And, while I’m at it, I really dislike the idea of “valuing” relationships. Relationships aren’t houses in Monopoly. They’re people. And in my definition, people you care about. Not ones that you’re mentally tagging with a price gun.
Am I off base here? Do you think about people this way? Do you think about your online interactions this way?
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by Sarah Morgan on May 17, 2010
Their ability to make normally lovely people into incredibly annoying people.
Have Facebook and Twitter some strange power to shut down the lobe whose job it is to consider:
“… Hey, is this of even the slightest interest to anyone else?”
“… Will this make anybody roll their eyes at me?”
“… Am I maybe coming off like a total asshat?”
Apparently, yes. Yes they do.
So I’m taking action. If your tweets or updates include any of the following, I hereby unilaterally and for all time revoke your ability to get hurt feelings for being mocked:
- Banal errands. I don’t care if you’re going to Starbucks. I just don’t.
- Emo song lyrics. You listen to this music before you grow a sense of humor. And you leave it in your bedroom where you apply black eyeliner and write in your journal about how misunderstood you are. I did it that way, and I’d appreciate it if you did too.
- Play-by-play. If I care about the game, I have it on, and I don’t need this. If I don’t, I don’t, and I don’t. Either way.
- Topics that have formed the subject of three or more previous posts. The only possible exceptions to this are your own children. And that’s only if they’re real cute.
Otherwise? Frankly? Shush.
Silence can be beautiful, people. Respect the beauty of a bare status.
(A Facebook hate post that has nothing to do with privacy or Mark Zuckerberg. Who would have thought?)
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by Sarah Morgan on April 23, 2010
I’m obsessed with Such Tweet Sorrow. It couldn’t be otherwise. Come on. It’s a digital production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. If you added cute shoes you’d have everything good in life.
The tweaks are good – 16-year-old Juliet’s mom died 10 years ago in a crash from which Romeo’s dad, who she may-or-may-not have been cheating with, survived. Juliet and Tybalt have a stepmother they loathe and a big sister, Jess, who they nickname “Nursey”. Laurence (last name Friar) is the local hippie barista. The local shit-stirrer, Jago, provides omniscient narration.
It’s inspired work from the RSC and I’m head over heels for it. Nothing surprising there.
What’s really gets me is that it’s real-time and un-on-demand-able – and that is so oldschool it’s groundbreaking.
In tracking this, I’m watching digital media usher in a Renaissance of event entertainment. Liveblogging and livetweeting are the new “appointment television” (~1988) and “must-see-TV” (1993) – and they’re just as captivating. I’m loving it.
If you want to check it out, in addition to the website, I’ve made my own list where I’m watching the story unfold. (Some of the smaller characters aren’t in the website stream.) Find it here.
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