My Experience with Social Networking (Response to #2)

I have watched social networking evolve throughout my lifetime.  At first the big rush was towards AOL and its instant messaging service.  Many of my friends and their families would communicate with each other through screen names.  Before I knew it, everyone was doing it and so naturally I had to also.  I went through half a dozen screen names over the years before blogs and LiveJournals started showing up.  I felt like only the really artsy or presumptuous kids made those, basically as monuments to themselves.  My involvement on that front was severely limited because I didn’t see the allure of sharing my life with others online.  At that point, that level of dedication to online social interaction was reserved for very few of my friends and acquaintances, it was still a new thing. 

It wasn’t until my second or third year of high school that MySpace became huge.  Before I knew it, it had become a necessity for anyone who wanted to stay in the loop.  News, events, gossip, conversations, and meeting new people all became accessible through MySpace.  It opened new doors to who you could talk to and reach out to.  In many ways, MySpace removed some of the social barriers of real world interaction because it was so simple to use.  You could share information with people you would normally not have the chance to do so with.  It became a way to inform others about yourself and thusly attract attention.  Through this trends grew and the ripples of popularity were felt.  MySpace was unique in the fact that it was fully customizable and one could make sure their page was unique from others’.  After another couple of years, MySpace became enormous.  Everyone and their dog had one and the novelty of the web site was, in my opinion, fading fast.  MySpace had come to include everything.  The sheer amount of advertisements flooding my message box and my profile page made it clear to me that MySpace had become naturally permeated with internet lust.  The “social network” that was MySpace was becoming too big for my taste, there weren’t enough regulations about who got in and could spread their crap everywhere.  I eventually stopped logging in because there was nothing new about the MySpace experience any longer.

It was then that I turned to Facebook.  By then I was an upperclassmen in high school.  Facebook had earned the reputation at my school for being exclusive because only a proportionately small number of kids used it instead of MySpace.  It was like the “New World” of social networking.  As soon as I joined Facebook I felt as though it was the more professional, less imaginative, and less individualistic version of MySpace.  Everyone’s page was the same format, albeit the efforts one could put into describing their “interests” and favorite music, etc…Pretty much the only difference between people’s Facebook pages was the number of wall posts and pictures.  I felt as though I conformed to using Facebook because by this time I was dependent upon some sort of online social network to keep in touch with my friends.  It wasn’t so much Facebook itself that hooked me, it was just the same services and features I had grown accustomed to through MySpace which demanded my membership.  Since I joined Facebook, I have gained hundreds of “friends”, made dozens of regretful wall posts, been tagged in way too many unflattering pictures, been invited to way too many events I don’t care about, but I wouldn’t trade any of that away because I can’t afford to be left out of the loop.  The benefits of such simplified and universal communication outweighed the negatives.  There’s no way for me to go forward without it, however I reached its limit of usefulness for me a while ago. 

Now, I would consider myself to be a Facebook hermit.  I’ve got all the friends I really want or need, and many I don’t.  I have little or no interest in catching up on people via picture or wall stalking.  Basically all I do is wish people happy birthday, occasionally comment on status updates and write links to YouTube videos on certain friends’ walls.  And that is really all I ever wanted to do.  I don’t worry about my privacy because I either don’t care what people think when they “stalk” me, or I know that like me, many of them don’t care either.  Sometimes I delete wall posts that are a little too revealing for the general Facebook audience though, mostly due to the fear of future employers getting a hold such things.  When I look back on this social network phenomenon, to me it is like a cycle of discovery, interest, adaptation and apathy.  I have reached my apathetic stage and even though I log on Facebook almost every day, it’s usually only for about five minutes at a time before I get bored and log off.  I would have to say that while this social network has become stagnant for me, it will probably not remain so for long.  Only time will tell when the next Facebook-like online social network will emerge and either further filter my online activities or funnel me along into the next big online trend which demands my and everyone else’s participation.  It is a metamorphosis of the link between social convergence and technological advancement, and it will drag us all along for better or worse.