Social (?) media
Okay then. Yeah, it's been a bit over three months since I last visited this space. Life became very busy, and I minimized my online dalliances as I often do when I shift focus into things needing lots of physical and mental effort, as well as applied time. I did try to visit the ol' friends list and comment here and there, but even that took a back seat further down the aisle. After a while I noticed something, quite different from years past.
Nothing.
Where there was once a peripheral exchange of emails, messages, phone calls or other keep-in-touch forms of communication outside the sphere of LJ (and Facebook, for that matter), instead there was practically nothing. Exactly one person asked if everything was okay, etc. after a couple months had gone by. I measured this against my original hesitation (in the halcyon dialup days of internet communication in the early-mid 90s) to use the medium in a personal sense to make friends and how incredibly life-changing that decision had been. Perhaps it was the newness, the novelty of instant communications spared from the constraints of time and distance that drew people together and facilitated the interaction, which so often culminated in people traveling hundred or thousands of miles to finally meet in person those friends they had made online. It was wonderful. It's how I met Jeff, and our relationship is strong a dozen years later. Over time, though, it seemed that the interests in such meetings on a grand scale kinda dissipated, but the online interactions remained pretty strong. Now even this seems to be petering out as well, and I'm mostly at a loss to figure out any particular reason(s) for it. Like that old saying goes, it was fun while it lasted.
I tried for a short time to revisit Facebook for a while. Despite some solid communication with long lost folks there, the prospect of constantly battling with how that service is run and the near perfect record of changes hostile to privacy and control of information along with the sheer bulk of commercial interests oozing in every nook and cranny pushed me back out again. LJ, my last haven, seems to have gotten so balkanized and a bit deserted. Had I started off this post with "Hey, I'm back" or similar, I would have been chided by some as if I was breaking some unwritten rule. There could even have been some unfriendings.
I suppose it all boils down to things more or less coming full circle for me. I started off kept to myself, a loner in life. I discovered a means of communication that worked well with my personality, and I had ended up with a lot of friends, many similar to me as far as how they use online interactions as a preface to making real-life friendships that last. It's not a perfect system, we are all human, of course. I do know for sure that in the near 20 years I have sat at various keyboards and screens making friends with people all over the world I am forever changed for the better. Now as I enter my fogey years, I can feel comfortable with the manageable circle of friends I have made online as well as those predating the "cyber" era. I also need to come to grips that, in some aspects of life, I am pretty much that original loner I started off being all those decades ago. Sometimes I am totally alone in some of life's situations, despite having varying "levels" of friends, and an ever decreasing group of loved ones. I just don't want to end up like some I have seen recently, seemingly abandoned in nursing homes with not much more than a paid staff for company.
I don't intend to pull the plug on this here LJ, at least not anytime soon. Despite all the faults of the service and folks jumping ship, what remains, at least for me, is a nicely sized group of interesting people, I might not say much anymore, but I am watching. Thanks for being there.
Nothing.
Where there was once a peripheral exchange of emails, messages, phone calls or other keep-in-touch forms of communication outside the sphere of LJ (and Facebook, for that matter), instead there was practically nothing. Exactly one person asked if everything was okay, etc. after a couple months had gone by. I measured this against my original hesitation (in the halcyon dialup days of internet communication in the early-mid 90s) to use the medium in a personal sense to make friends and how incredibly life-changing that decision had been. Perhaps it was the newness, the novelty of instant communications spared from the constraints of time and distance that drew people together and facilitated the interaction, which so often culminated in people traveling hundred or thousands of miles to finally meet in person those friends they had made online. It was wonderful. It's how I met Jeff, and our relationship is strong a dozen years later. Over time, though, it seemed that the interests in such meetings on a grand scale kinda dissipated, but the online interactions remained pretty strong. Now even this seems to be petering out as well, and I'm mostly at a loss to figure out any particular reason(s) for it. Like that old saying goes, it was fun while it lasted.
I tried for a short time to revisit Facebook for a while. Despite some solid communication with long lost folks there, the prospect of constantly battling with how that service is run and the near perfect record of changes hostile to privacy and control of information along with the sheer bulk of commercial interests oozing in every nook and cranny pushed me back out again. LJ, my last haven, seems to have gotten so balkanized and a bit deserted. Had I started off this post with "Hey, I'm back" or similar, I would have been chided by some as if I was breaking some unwritten rule. There could even have been some unfriendings.
I suppose it all boils down to things more or less coming full circle for me. I started off kept to myself, a loner in life. I discovered a means of communication that worked well with my personality, and I had ended up with a lot of friends, many similar to me as far as how they use online interactions as a preface to making real-life friendships that last. It's not a perfect system, we are all human, of course. I do know for sure that in the near 20 years I have sat at various keyboards and screens making friends with people all over the world I am forever changed for the better. Now as I enter my fogey years, I can feel comfortable with the manageable circle of friends I have made online as well as those predating the "cyber" era. I also need to come to grips that, in some aspects of life, I am pretty much that original loner I started off being all those decades ago. Sometimes I am totally alone in some of life's situations, despite having varying "levels" of friends, and an ever decreasing group of loved ones. I just don't want to end up like some I have seen recently, seemingly abandoned in nursing homes with not much more than a paid staff for company.
I don't intend to pull the plug on this here LJ, at least not anytime soon. Despite all the faults of the service and folks jumping ship, what remains, at least for me, is a nicely sized group of interesting people, I might not say much anymore, but I am watching. Thanks for being there.