Last night I deactivated my face book account. There was no drama, no panic, in fact probably no real reason to do so. Simple truth was, as I don’t play games, as I don’t really use the status updates/friends/chat things (and as I really didn’t appreciate back in June finding out through my dad’s partner’s page that she and my dad had gotten married without telling me or my sister) I didn’t really see the point. I wasn’t using the site, it was just sitting there, with my details on it – and given the ever changing security issues I just thought to myself… what is the point? As I couldn’t find a reasonable answer I deactivated. So yes, unsociable networking!
I’ve been playing around on the internet for what seems like since it came into common use; as far back as 1993 I was part of a group of students who had a very basic bulletin board and live chat system that linked up about 5 universities – through which I made friends I still have today. However, as time has gone on the net has grown and changed massively, as have my interests and outlooks…
These days I suppose more than anything I am a lurker…. in an internet sense, not in a darkened alleyways kind of thing … I am a member of various forums (in particular those in relation to books, music, dogs and knitting – grief I really am very boring), as well belonging to several Yahoo groups. Myspace and Bebo passed me by.
I blog here, and in the past have blogged elsewhere, I read a lot of blogs other people write and am known to follow links around the net till I can’t get back to where I started. Blogs interest me, both those which promote the blogger as part of their work, those that inform, and those which are essentially a personal record of the blogger (rather like this one is). Someone tweeted last night whether we thought she should capitalise her subject headings on her blog... but as I replied, I subscribe to the “it’s my blog and I’ll post what I damn well please” school of thought and she should do what she wanted to, not necessarily what was expected.
Aside from this blog, the only exception I have to my status as a lurker/unsociable networker is Twitter – for some reason I seem to be able to tweet incoherently on a far too regular basis. I guess because it’s in real time, it’s only 140 words, in which it is quite hard to piss someone else off! (No this blog and my Twitter account aren’t linked – it is possible to work back one way or another and connect them, but there is no definitive link – why? Because I have work colleagues and some friends on my Twitter feed who might feel uncomfortable with some of the things I blog about).
I used to post regularly on some sites, and joined in with meet ups arranged by one book group (why yes, I did freak my family out – you are going away for a weekend with a group of people you met on the net, are you mad?). So why am I “only” a lurker these days? It’s not that I no longer have opinions, thoughts or in rare cases relevant experience. I will occasionally post, but I am not going to answer every post, comment on every thread, on every site I visit. If the site, forum or group is a large one, or has a very obvious clique of people that it’s just not worth going up against then I won’t post - a lot of it has to do with the fact that I am a wimp. I don’t like arguments; I don’t want shooting down in flames if I say something that is not agreed with, life is too short to upset myself this way. There is also a fear of being misinterpreted – with group users all over the world, sometimes the way something is said is taken completely the wrong way, something said with genuine intent appears sarcastic, or something said in fun is taken the wrong way (usually for the lack of an emote). It’s a case of been there, done that, slunk off and licked my metaphorical wounds, don’t want to rinse and repeat.
In nearly 20 years of using the net (during which time I have actively moderated several sites as an independent moderator with no interest in the subject of the site itself) I’ve made lots of friends, both virtual and eventually in some cases in real life. I’ve only ever come across a handful of people who are not genuine, those who rather than having something to say just have axes to grind or who are just there to troll. These are usually fairly easy to spot. Lying on the net is no different from lying in real life – sooner or later you will mix your stories up and it will come back to bite you on the bum. Okay so I probably leave myself wide open to being fooled, but until I’ve evidence to the contrary I am not going to jump to any conclusions about anyone or anything.
A little tolerance and forethought goes quite a long way. I sometimes wish you got a pop up box that said “are you sure you want to post this”. Just taking time to think about what you are saying, to ask yourself is this post going to hurt someone? Do I need to say this? It’s easy to be judgmental or to make accusations about someone when you aren’t in the same room – but would you walk up to someone you only knew in passing and make the same statement to their faces? My other bug bear is that although everyone makes mistakes, yes really, everyone, very few seem to be capable of saying “I’m sorry, I was wrong.” Wouldn’t it make the net a nicer place to lurk.
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