The Allure of Social Media (or Lack of It)

2009-2012 was the peak of my social media activity. Loneliness (or the urge to connect with people) drove me to pour my heart out to my Xanga. Same with Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and various forums. 4 years later, I'm dispassionate and rarely make updates. At least, not as consistent as I used to.

Maybe it's the death of Xanga. The community aspect propelled Xangans. Still, the mass exodus happened before 2009. Remaining members interacted through top blogs. Those who never visited the front page of the site (like me, prior to 2007-2008) had no idea of the larger groups. Xanga 2.0 did nothing. I don't think it was necessarily a rip-off, but it was definitely false advertisement. The old Xanga platform was ripe for hackers and spammers to exploit. Most of the community didn't know it. Moving to another platform (Wordpress-powered Xanga 2.0) distanced the owners from the liabilities the old platform brought them. I guess it, too, distanced and divided its members.

Maybe something died inside me. A lot can happen in 4 years. Hopping from job to job, financial responsibilities, death in the family, online drama... dejection.

Maybe social media is saturated. Back in the Usenet group and IRC chat days (I guess AOL Instant Messenger is now part of that), it felt like you were in this secret online gathering. It felt special. What once was a niche gathering of like minded people is taken over by corporations monitoring your online activity, blasting ads up the wazoo catered to your browsing habits. It's still a gathering of like minded people, except everyone knows about it. Currently, social media is like the big city: crowded, noisy, and never sleeps.
Maybe it's all of them.

I'm done.

On the Road

Driving around for the past 11 days.

I'm done.

Pet Peeve: When People Make Their Own "Memes"

A meme is an element of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by nongenetic means, especially imitation. A humorous image, video, piece of text, etc. that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.

A meme is a repeated idea. That's why advice animals are memes. Because it's the same basic concept done over and over with different exact circumstances.

JUST PUTTING TEXT AT THE TOP AND BOTTOM OF A PICTURE ISN'T A MEME!!!

This is a meme. Specifically, the use of Fry’s face with the text “Not sure if…” is the meme. What people normally call a meme is actually the image macro style. Annoyingly, this mistake is taking over (and, I guess, becoming a meme in and of itself. Meta.)

Here’s a list of things that are not memes:

Random, shitty photos with random, shitty captions
You
So remember, when you hear someone say “I made this cool meme”, you can be assured that they are almost certainly wrong.


I'm done.

Facebook Anxiety

I'm not the only one who gets anxious about adding people on Facebook, am I?

I overthink everything. Rationally, I know people have reasons for not accepting friend requests. I accept that. But the thought is overwhelming. I respect people's privacy too much that I stopped adding people altogether. People add me and I accept. And others probably feel the same way.

It's possible there's someone whom I would add and they would add me, but both of us feel the same way and overthink things. So we acknowledge each other's existence and don't want to overstep like the worst game of courteous chicken.

I'm done.