facebook our lives

social networks are connecting people like never before. we can keep up-to-date with the intimate details of our friends lives without ever seeing them (or often, without having ever met them). more and more we are facebooking and tweeting our lives. i think at some point, most of us have asked ourselves “what the hell am i doing?”, having rushed home after a fabulous night out and stayed up to post pictures to our wall, update our status or at least twittered about our drunken adventure. i have the excuse that i’m a diva and i’m in a band, so people are really interested in my exploits. but what about lesser mortals? do i really need to know about your budgie with the runs or what kind of knickers you are wearing?

of course, the answer is… yes!

why the hell not? we’ve had to put up with decades of hearing crap about celebrities. who gives a rats backside whether britney spears forgot to get fully dressed…again? or whether paris hilton likes figs or bananas? I’m much more interested in my friend’s love life or looking at pictures from events that, for some reason or another (usually distance), i couldn’t be part of but can feel included via facebook. i can exchange silly comments, jokes or thoughts that i would never pick up the phone to share. i can send links to things i found interesting and they can ignore them without any feelings of guilt on either side. i can chat when i feel like it without having to get dressed or tidy up my house or have anything of substance to say. just because i want to say “hi”

i like that.

i’m not sure if it’s of any value to the world. or to us as individuals. i don’t think it necessarily makes us closer or makes us better friends. i’m sure lots of people would argue that it’s time-wasting and there are hundreds of other things we could/should be doing. but that’s always been the case. what did we do before we had facebook and twitter when we couldn’t be assed to do something more “productive”? watched telly. twiddled our thumbs. stared out of the window. slept. all pretty useless (well, sleeping is good if you have to).

for many of us, social networks have made us more communicative and, dare i say it, made us feel that are lives are interesting enough to share. that we are all celebrities in our own lunchtimes. and i believe we are as interesting as any of the famous folk. just as complex, intriguing and unique.

social media/citizen journalism is a different kettle of fish. i’ll do a post on that tomorrow (probably). for now, i’m enjoying sharing my nonsense with you, my two faithful readers (yes, it’s two now!) and i hope you are too. i’ll stop when i start saying “lol” in real life. until then…