Wednesday, July 29, 2009

T. M. I.

In today’s computer based society filled with social networking tools like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter and blogs, are we giving away too much information about ourselves without leaving any mystery?

I will be the first one to admit, I love Facebook. I update my “status” constantly and I often feel like people really do care about the mundane details of my life. I mean really? I updated that I was getting my hair cut and colored and I got to learn that L really likes to get her scalp massaged when they’re washing her hair and seriously? That’s important stuff.

With this blog I put out tons of information about myself and my experiences - my likes and dislikes - allowing all of my millions of readers (ha!) to really know me. While there is some fun to that; I often wonder - when you’re getting so much constant information do you really need to spend any time with a person, or are snippets of status updates and blog posts good enough?

I always talk about how I’m an over communicator. And this blog really proves it. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter and you could really know what I’m doing and how I’m feeling on a constant reel all day every day. Which means, someone who may be apt to call every once and awhile or text and ask how you’re doing doesn’t have to because they already know that I’m headed to do yoga in my back yard or eating a delicious meal at The Rock with my favorite B-Town girls. This means, you lose human connection and that could lead to dangerous results.

I am sometimes hesitant about becoming friends with people on Facebook that I have recently met because it gives me all away. There is no need to call me and ask what I’m up to because they can see the pictures and read the comments. I’m raw and exposed and sometimes I don’t want to be. Sometimes I WANT a person to want to get to know me through long phone calls or heaven forbid actually spending time with me.

I am even more hesitant to give out the link to this blog (even though you can access it from my Facebook page) because here, in what I consider my own little world, I am letting the people in cyber space see me for who I really am thus allowing for a lot of judgment and criticism and for any mystery to be thrown out the window.

Some will say that I’m an open book anyway and even talking to me for 7 minuets will yield you a wealth of useless information about me, and they’re right. I ALWAYS have SOMETHING to say – whether it’s useful or not is another question – but isn’t it more fun to have that conversation in person rather than to read it in a blog? I myself am WAY more entertaining to spend time with than just read about - ha ha...

All of this means, I should just limit my status updating and my blogging but I’m sucked in. I enjoy it. I really do like reading (most of the time) about what people are up to. I like checking out their pictures and having a little window into their worlds. So I guess it’s a game of balance in trying to put things out there while maintaining a bit of the mystery which can be really intriguing…I will now become mysterious and leave you with that…

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