March 30, 2011
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The Facebook Effect
Sometimes I wonder if Facebook has resulted in a downturn in creativity — namely MY creativity. Whereas on Xanga I used to actually put some thought into my posts, on Facebook my activity seems to be a jumble of quick links to news articles, YouTube videos, and “checking in” to places I go in the city. Also, that damned “Like” button makes it easy to seem like you’re keeping in touch with someone, when all you’re actually doing is social networking the lazy way.
I understand that with our busy daily lives, Facebook is the easiest way to pop into our virtual living rooms and quickly say hello to whoever happens to be there at the time. Yet I really miss the old Xanga days when I could easily spend an hour immersing myself in reading thoughtful posts by others, and typing, editing, and doing research for my own posts. This literally may be the longest non-work related chunk of text I’ve written in a long time (sad, I know). It’s not as though I no longer have anything to say — I could write about the recent tsunami, recent events in my life, family drama, my dog (of course), or any number of other crazy things.
I’ve been really active on my Tumblr site, but that place is really just a collection of articles and other items relating to dogs. I don’t really write long essays there. Xanga is where I first discovered the world of social networking, and I wish that it could recapture its old glory days when we used to exchange ideas and thoughtful sentiment with each other on a daily basis through our posts.
