No more hateful updates, please

You know, I don't want to sit here and complain, but the internet invites and supports certain annoying behaviors that I have a hard time ignoring.

I was recently reading Natalie Dee's blog (thanks for the recommendation, Meggers), and Natalie wrote about how boring Twitter is. I couldn't agree more. I also know that Natalie would make fun of me for blogging about a blog about a website, but I strive for postmodernity in everything I do. Anyway, Twitter is pretty stupid. The only reason I have a membership to it is so I can update my Facebook status from my cell phone—just like a teenager, I know.

I like to update my Facebook status when I see something interesting, like a guy walking down the sidewalk dragging a giant cross that says "Jesus is Lord" all over it. Or, I was on the bus the other day and a guy behind me was trying to hit on a girl by telling her about his eating addiction, and all she could do was tell him how much she loves to drink and ponder whether drinking is what caused her to gain seven pounds in the last two weeks. Then, the guy got really judgy and started preaching at her and asking her what makes her like to drink—“So you like to feel numb?” ("No, I like to feel good," was her vapid response). Their respective words would have been funny in a vacuum, but it was really disturbing because the guy seemed at the same time both harmless and creepy, and the girl was too naïve to recognize that giving away information like that about yourself—loudly, on a bus full of strangers—isn't the safest thing for a girl to do.

So I send info like this to my silly Facebook status update because I find it interesting and I think others may find it interesting. It’s just a way to pass the time. Or, when a horrible freak accident claims the life of one of the most wonderful teachers I've ever had the privilege of taking a class from, the seemingly-shallow status update helps me to share my grief with others, as corny (or ridiculous) as that may sound.

However, I’m not fond of being subjected to the hateful whims of my friends. If I want to read someone complaining, I can read blogs where people complain. I don’t really like to be bombarded on my Facebook page by bitchy comments about how all the girls on the BSU campus are dressed like stupid little whores, or about how proud someone is of all the things that she hates. And I really don’t like it when people have this updating thing hooked up to their text messaging via Twitter so I get texts about this crap all day long. Because I am enough of a dork that I get a little thrill when I hear the beep-beep-beep of my cell phone and I will usually drop whatever I’m doing to see what the text says.

It’s really disappointing to see some extremely bitchy comment about something I don’t really care about; a comment that doesn't want a response from me but exists merely to hit me with negative energy. And maybe you feel the same way about this whole blog post, but you can choose not to read a blog. You can’t really choose not to read a text message, because—hey, there it is! You’ve already read it! And sure, Facebook isn’t really that important in the grand scheme of things, but it’s an indulgence that some people find fun and use to talk to their friends. It kind of ruins the fun when you have to be subjected to hateful messages every time you log in.

Blogging

I haven't used this space for actual blogging for awhile. I haven't had time to breathe these past two semesters, let alone read or write or do anything I actually wanted to do. However, my workload of two papers per week (on the average) has left me with an addiction to writing that must be fed.

Sometimes I get weirded out about how the internet has changed the way we live our lives. If we'd been told in the 1980's or even the 90's that eventually we'd all belong to Facebook or Twitter or have webcams/personal websites that kept people updated on what we were doing from moment to moment, we probably would've thought it was absurd--only in a dystopian novel would such things occur. I think it's interesting and also a bit creepy that Facebook lets me know stuff like what books my friends are reading and who they're friends with. It's kind of like voluntarily submitting to Big Brother for reasons of ego. I wonder if people will eventually become so comfortable and so used to living this way that they'll be updating things like, "I just cheated on my spouse" or "I just took a shit."