Skip to main content

Even More on Social Media and Human Behavior

Do you casually put up anything that comes to mind on Facebook/Twitter, Twitter being designed for this, or do you put some thought into provocative, humorous or controversial statements, hoping for comments or re-Tweets?

I prefer Facebook because a) more of my friends are on it, and b) because it invites lengthier and more diverse conversation, sometimes between friends who don’t otherwise know each other from different parts of one’s life, between high school friends, college friends and Boston friends for example. I prefer the conversation. And find myself irrationally unhappy when I don’t get it.

Do you also worry about when to stop commenting? If you have the last word have you been selfish, or so dull that you are conversation ending? If you do not leave the last comment, then have you been rude and abrupt?

If no one comments then are you unpopular, dull or simply lost in the rush. Which leads to my own low-self esteem general question, “Do my friends really like me?”

I find it humorous that posts that where I expect many comments get none, and toss away, random posts especially if concerned with the domestic get multiple responses. I suppose it is commonality. Not having children I tend to refrain from commenting on those posts, and I find it limits my engagement somewhat, to my regret. A friend in blogging once commented that parents have infinite sources for blog posts, while we childless have somewhat less. I could post Guinness’ antics and Mephisto’s foibles, I suppose, but they are rather repetitive.

Do other people worry about such things, or is it just me?

Comments

Anonymous said…
Lol....I have thought about this subject as well and it is funny to see you put into words many of the things that have popped into my head at times. Why do I post some of the inane everyday things I do? Will people think I am boring, too domestic, or just plain goofy? Then I decide that I don't care because I am being me.
But I must admit when I post a comment and think "oh yes I will get some replies" and no one even clicks the like button I am somewhat dismayed. However there are times when I have reconnected with old friends, new friends, and honestly even people I don't really know by posting something that I thought was trivial. And thus the pull, the desire to be on facebook.... Just to get a couple laughs or engage in conversation with someone I might not normally talk to. Keeping the connections alive with people , the social aspect of it, that is the great draw for me.
Unknown said…
Oh, absolutely. Sometimes I compare myself with someone who writes about getting up at the break of dawn and doing all their lawn work and feel like such a loser that I swear that I'm never going back to Facebook, but then I have connected both with poeple I knew well and many that I didn't know well and with whom I have had great conversations.

Popular posts from this blog

Adapting a book--The Prestige

I was completely blown away by the movie of The Prestige , and I thought then about reading the novel, but it seemed too soon. So I carried the author's name around with me for over a year (Christopher Priest) and then, finally remembered to buy it through an odd sequence of events. We watched The Painted Veil based on the novel by Maugham starring Edward Norton, and while I decided I didn't want to read The Painted Veil because of it's differences from the film (which was more romantic and tragic) it reminded me that I had wanted to read Fight Club (the movie version of which starred Edward Norton) and that reminded me that I had wanted to read The Prestige (which did not star Edward Norton, but was up against The Illusionist which did). Whew...so it's all Edward Norton's fault. The Prestige is a very good novel, and yet, the movie differs from it considerably. And I am still trying to figure out what exactly that means. The central premise is the same, AND HE...

Yay! Dystopia!

So, I've been having a dystopia fest (this is not rare for me--I am fascinated by dystopian literature). I read Margaret Atwood's "Madadam," another book in the series that began with "Oryx & Crake." If you haven't read "Oryx & Crake," I can't recommend it highly enough. It just blew my mind when I read it several years ago. It is both dystopian--pre-apocolyptic, and post-apocalyptic. And watched "Metropolis," and "Things to Come." Then I consumed "The Hunger Games"--all three books--in three days. I had never read "The Hunger Games" before, and I found the writing hard to slog through. I understand that it was supposed to capture the simple, plain speech of Katniss, along with the present tense, but 1st person, present tense is a hard sell for a long book, let alone three. That said, the story was intriguing. I will be curious to see how they handle the horrifying violence of the l...

The end of Cloud Atlas

Feel I must write this--promised it to myself, can I finish before midnight (when I said I would go to bed at 11)? Where was I? Oh, yes, section 5, where it gets interesting--because it's the future, at least 25 years, hopefully more. I say hopefully, because I don't want to be living in this future. The section is called "An Orison of Sonmi-451." An Orison (I had to look it up, proving I don't remember my Shakespeare) is a prayer, but in this future world where language has taken as many turns as in Orwell's 1984, it is more a confession or final statement. Sonmi-451 is a clone (as the name might suggest). The section is not entirely original. It owes much to Brave New World and Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (made into the film Bladerunner ). I find it interesting that 40 or so years ago--when Dick wrote his book he believed that future slaves would be Androids, replicants. Now we are much more likely to presume they will be clo...