hi

[thewalkingman]

I've been struggling with social media lately. I don't really know where to do it anymore. Facebook is the most obvious option, because it's what everyone else is using, but I find it almost unusable. It's just a mess. There's no sense to order in which things are displayed. Some things end up buried. The ads are out of control. I also really hate

Comments

[6dark6lotus6]

I can appreciate what you're going through as far as social media goes. A few weeks back, I spent quite a few hours reading back my horribly scatterbrained, teenage rantings and couldn't believe how tight-knit the community felt when I reached my comment sections. I could write an entry about nothing in particular and still have everyone drop in for the sake of conversation. With Facebook, Twitter and all of the rest, I don't really think its possible to form that sort of bond with folks the way we used to on LiveJournal. For example, I have Facebook friends that I couldn't even begin to tell you where or why they were added. You? I was one of the lucky folks to receive a hilarious response from the legendary Billiam in one of the communities I followed at the time. After you retired the character, I followed you here.

Social media, as a whole, just doesn't function that way anymore. Its a shame, too. We have the world at our fingertips and we choose to communicate through memes or not at all.

That being said, it is good to see you back, Sir.

[thewalkingman]

I feel like everything is just people reacting to advertisements now. I know that sounds like a pissy, pretentious thing to say, but I think it's true. Facebook and Twitter are almost entirely people either approving of or being outraged by advertisement packaged as news, or packaged as entertainment, or celebrity gossip. It's like all of the internet is Oh No They Didn't or Perez Hilton or something now.

I realized that I don't really write about culture anymore because everyone is writing about culture now, constantly. That's all anyone is doing anymore it seems like. Being outraged that they're remaking this or that this game has this problem or that this movie has lady ghostbusters. Nobody enjoys anything passively anymore. Nobody just sees an advertisement for something and says "I'd like to see that" and then goes to see it and either enjoys it or not. Everyone has to pick apart every single detail before it even comes out.

What prompted this whole thing was that they released a preview image of Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the new IT movie currently in production, and everyone and their grandma had something to say about it. It's too scary, it's not scary enough, it looks too much like Tim Curry, it doesn't look enough like Tim Curry. I just wanted to grab them all by the neck and scream "WHO FUCKING CARES?!" Either the movie is going to be good, or it isn't. Pennywise will either be scary, or he won't. It'll all be in the performance anyway. This is one photograph. WHY DOES EVERYONE NEED TO HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT IT? Just wait for the movie and watch it if you want to.

And I'm just as guilty of it as anyone else. I bitch about stupid, meaningless pop culture stuff all the time. But I want to stop. I want to step out of that tornado of advertisement. That's why I deactivated Facebook. They've got people so wound up that now we're OUTRAGED that a movie isn't what we want it to be. Or we're upset because Taylor Swift and Kanye West have beef or we're losing our minds because Beyonce farted and it went triple platinum.

I have to get out of it. I just don't know where to go.