It's Not Personal

It's Not Personal

Some people have a problem with rejection. I hope you are not one of those. But thanks to 'Social Networking' that rejection reaction can now extend to not accepting goofy invitations to join in real causes or virtual games. If you are on one or more of the big sites, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., you have probably seen something of this, already.

You sign up to sites like these to catch up and keep up with old friends, family and coworkers, innocently enough. As they each become more familiar with the network, they start leaving little Twitter-like updates. "John is looking forward to the weekend" and "Terry is heading to lunch with Erin" and "Kim has had it with spyware!". Okay, not bad. You have to be on-site to get these updates and they quickly scroll-away into the ether like the empty calories they (mostly) are.

But very quickly, it seems most people buckle under some kind of pressure to treat their updates almost like some kind of performance art. There is pressure to be Funny or to be Deep or to be Quirky. The updates start to become more along the lines of "Luis thinks every movie should star Adam Sandler" and "Brad has decided he needs a new truck". And if you are blessed to be on a network that allows developers to build little web applications and plug into the network's API, you soon can be trading wishes, feeding unicorns, finding out What Kind of Kisser are You? and comparing each others' taste in books and movies and TV. Hmm... What kind of car are you?

It's actually possible to get paid (at least for a while) to sit and watch as your cohorts buy each other rounds of pretend-beer, with pretend money. And not like the pretend beer you used to get in Kansas years ago—real pretend beer that exists only as an icon on a Web page. I sometimes wonder if people really get that their bosses and potential employers or clients or family members are reading all of these.

Most of these updates come with little timestamps that can quickly reveal to the boss or your coworkers that you have spent an entire afternoon comparing favorite movies, or sending someone a bunny, or playing an online version of Scrabble. Last Christmas, I sent a Jewish friend of mine an icon of a baked ham. It all makes that much sense, to me.

What is accomplished by all of this?

I have an Instant Messenger client and I have several E-Mail accounts for keeping up with my family and friends, my coworkers and clients. To me, the value of a LinkedIn or Facebook account is in having but not abusing access to people who are, or were, somehow important to me, even if only briefly, even if years ago. I don't want that tube clogged with Which Puppy Is Cuter? or You Are Most Like Which Spice Girl? or a bunch of roll-playing knightly armor.

Brian Cooley, of CNET says it best, or at least most recently, for me. I'm full-up on phony drinks, cars and all of the rest.

I'm trying to learn JavaScript. I'm trying to keep up with PHP and MySQL. I'm wrestling with a new sick-leave request program and answering phones and e-mails and on and on and on. Pardon me, please, if I don't want to teach your virtual parrot a new word, today.

It's not personal.