|
Is oversharing online going out of fashion? One person on one newspaper's opinion page thinks so, which is what counts for a news hook when it comes to blogging these days, and I just so happen to disagree, so I came here to the internet to share my feelings on the matter.
As Alexandra Petri writes in the Washington Post piece The end of the age of overshare? "The long era of shouting noisily into the Internet may be at an end. So much for the era of overshare, the heyday of TMI."
Social networks like Google+, in which users can highly focus the groups with whom they'd like to share certain types information and not others, as well as similar recent updates to Facebook, she argues, mean that we are becoming more curatorial about the type of solipsistic info-dumps we're comfortable sleucing forth turd-like unto an uncaring audience of casual acquaintances and people we met at that party one time and never talked to again.
That may or may not be true, but mostly it's not, at least based on my super half-assed anecdotal research. Google+ currently has somewhere in the realm of (showing a steady pattern of growth from 60 million in December, , and 25 million over the summer.) Google+ will have 400 million users by the end of the year. But as many people have pointed out, those sort of numbers only indicate how many people have signed up for the service, not how many are actively using it on a regular basis, a number that is a lot smaller. My research puts it at around 0 million people.
All of which is a roundabout way of getting at my point, which is that while the idea of Google+ may support this decline in oversharing to everyone all at once thesis in that it hypothetically makes it easier to focus who it is we want to share with, the fact that literally no one I know -- and I know a lot of people very eager to share pointless shit online -- is doing so through Google+ renders this pillar in the piece's argument a little hard for me to swallow.
Further along she leans on more directly-related numbers, writing "But the pendulum seems to be swinging towards reticence. A survey conducted by found that in June of 2011 53 percent of Facebook users opted to make their friend lists private, in contrast to only 17 percent who did so in ."
Again, all this suggests is that maybe more people are merely restricting everyone in the world from looking at their pointless life detritus, it doesn't take into account the fact that many of our "friends lists" are comprised of thousands of people who we don't even know anyway. Just because they're called "friends" doesn't make it so. Perhaps then, we could say, "people are now more likely to only be oversharing with a huge group of barely-known internet relations." Is that even a trend worth writing about though?
The motivation, Petri suggests, is that we're all finally wising up to the fact that the things we share online are being used to market our own preferences back to us. I wrote about this myself over the summer in this piece in the WSJ Not Me Dot Com:
On the Internet, nothing you say or do ever really disappears. We leave behind a trail of digital breadcrumbs everywhere we go. The fact that your behavior on the Web is being monitored by companies who want to utilize that info for their own interests isn't a big surprise, but the sheer size of the data footprint each of us accumulates may give you pause. In the end, they're using it to tailor-make a just-for-you Web experience that you're supposed to like—whether you like it or not.Basically, durr, right?
Petri writes, "In 2011, 33 percent hid their high school name, age, relationship status, and hometowns from public view — a significant increase from the 12 percent who did so the ." That's a good thing, I think. It behooves anyone who's at all concerned about protecting their privacy to be careful with the types of things they share online, but that has nothing to do with the idea of oversharing she sets up as the premise, the epitome of whom she describes as
The Theoretically Archetypal Facebook Guy Who Tells You What He Ate For Breakfast was, at best, an exaggeration, and at worst, a total fabrication. I have yet, in the near-decade that I’ve spent on Facebook, to hear what anyone has eaten for breakfast. Maybe my friends wake up too late, or eat particularly undramatic cereal, or something.How great it must be to live in a world where people like that, ok, like me, don't constantly bombard you with the photos of things they purchased, took a photo of, consumed, then took another photo of themselves consuming. That's practically my entire news feed on any given night. I'm at this show, share the special experience with me. I ate, like, a piece of cake at this one place that sells cake. I'm shopping for toilet plungers, or whatever. Here's a picture of my hotel I'm at right now! Here's the color of the dump I just took. Ok that last one was me on Twitter yesterday after a bout with green food coloring that wouldn't go away, but it wasn't exactly out of the norm to talk about.
I think that's the way it should be actually. That, in essence, is what Facebook and Twitter for that matter, are for: oversharing. The only thing worse than someone who shares too much on social networks is someone who doesn't share anything at all. Someone who has an inanimate object for their profile photo or doesn't use their real name. You're not internetting right.
Facebook is a content farm, and all that your average person really has to draw on for material is the content of their own lives. If we stop sharing that then we just become a collection of middlemen shuffling links to consumer goods around back and forth with each other. That should be more ominous and scary from the standpoint of someone paranoid about corporate-controlled internet brainwashing than the idea that companies know what type of soap we use. I like this song. I like this story I read on this magazine's site. I like this YouTube clip. That's nice, but, I don't like any of those things. I like human beings and their highly specific, shitty little boring lives. The characters in fiction who resonate most readily with us are the ones that seem almost too good to be true, right? The same goes for Facebook -- you couldn't dream up most of these self-absorbed bores if you tried. Truth is stranger than fiction. It's more boring too, but that's the what keeping it real is all about, boring the fuck out of each other, forever.
brought to you by
13 comments:
i think b/c of the nature of facebook friends, i.e. people you occasionally see around town, or not or knew from high school or whatever makes me hesitant to blow out my life details to them. i have a few lists(putting things on lists!) where's it's like people i actually know, people i sort of know or whatever, conservative turds i don't want to argue with and share my content accordingly. also, if you work in an office(i don't anymore) but there's people from there that i don't really want to see what i do outside of there(drink and take dumb photos?)
yes, since 2005
I get your point Mustard. I guess I just have something different that makes me want to actually share that stupid shit with people, even, or maybe especially, the ones I don't know well. Just not in person. Please not in person.
One of the things that frustrates me about this blog interface is that there's no way to combine facebook discussions on a post with the post itself. Is there? Anyway, here's some stuff from FB that may or may not be interesting to anyone else but me.
Karen Mickley So are you saying it is a good idea or bad idea for people to post about their VD, presription drug abuse, interpersonal crises and home birth experiences (complete with underwater tub-cam)?
Luke O'Neil I think that sort of thing should be part of the greater social networking tapestry, yes. It gets a little old sometimes if everything is constant me me me, but it shouldn't go away, because then it's not social networking anymore, just advertising.
Karen Mickley The advertising fuels the me-me-me element, but i guess there is some level of increased awareness and involvement in community (on and offline) so i guess i agree :)
Walter Cornelius Budzian Facebook is and always has been about self-indulgent drivel. There is real content sharing going on at Google+ (at least in the tech culture, big ideas and arts fields) if that's what you're looking for.
Luke O'Neil Right, and drivel is why it's so popular. Most of our daily life is drivel. That's what makes it social. If you and I saw eachother we'd talk about the book/tv show we like and the bar/restaurant/most dangerous game-like
hunting reserve we just went to, not start talking 'big picture.'
Walter Cornelius Budzian I don't think that's necessarily true, and if it was, it would be because I didn't think you (the universal 'you') were capable of having a 'big picture' conversation.
Walter Cornelius Budzian Scratch what I just wrote. Instead, I meant: Isn't that a problem?
Luke O'Neil This is a little big picture for me.
Luke O'Neil But no, it's not. Given time we, the editorial we, will dig deeper, but on
a socializing level, at a bar etc, which is what fb is meant to replicate,
it's ok to 'shoot the shit.'
Walter Cornelius Budzian I don't think so. Facebook is mostly a desperate attempt to fantasize your own importance, while shooting the shit at a bar is mostly a way to lay groundwork for communication links.
Walter Cornelius Budzian Then, after we lay a groundwork of communication links, I can tell you how important I am.
Luke O'Neil Feel like a high percentage of my encounters at bars and parties are jusr
irl facebook, updating eachother on our PROJECTS.
Walter Cornelius Budzian So, like I said, isn't that a problem? Sounds pretty awful anyways.
Luke O'Neil I like a mix of both. Not sure what that percentage is. I like 'getting mad deep' with people who I think are worth my expending the effort, yourself for example, but I don't want to get into the shit with everyone I see every time.
Walter Cornelius Budzian Yeah, sometimes I just wanna dance.
Adam Gendreau Manufactured consent is a hell of a drug.
Luke O'Neil Freal doe, I ate some green velvet cake sat night and pooped green food coloring all day yesterday.
1. that name bit hasn't been funny once, but i swing at every fucking time. 2. what i was saying luke that it's not that i hide the drivel from people i don't know. i hide the shit that actually matters to me. but there's really not much that matters to me on facebook, but you know. so and so that i met 3 times can't see my wedding photos or whatever. the nature of the casual acquaintance on facebook actually leads to more and more drivel in a way. it's like oh what am i willing to share with that dude/bro/gal i met at a show. i dunno, here's a picture of a taco or a link to a music video i like. i mean i guess you could be earnest on facebook but that just seems like a disaster. you don't really want to share every one of your neuroses with people you hardly know? plus, in our current political landscape/demographic what is less cool than being earnest? everything sucks right, read the archives!
What name bit?
I don't know, I get all your points, and that's cool with me, but I guess all I'm saying is just be exactly like I am on facebook.
the bit where i keep writing my name as am unfunny variation of mustard. anyway, i'm going to take your advice. where can i get a shittier camera?
I experienced a reaction that could probably be classified within the same phylum, if not genus, as laughter in regards to that last one.
as for the camer-ah, the trick is to always read your phone in the same hand you're holding a burning cigarette in so the smoke gets all up inside the lens and fucks it up good.
validation! i should've put this on facebook so everyone could see it!
In the immortal words of one Mr. Michael "Mike" Brodeur, every thread is like a show, dude. That means you can just think of every IRL conversation or 1 on 1 online interaction as rehearsal.
PS, that also means you owe money for the space rent now. Tony will be around to collect it.
I just went back up to the top and laughed at D Jean Meüstærd. Mr Colman is right though - I'm often just about to bring the realness on facebook when I realise multiple colleagues/ex-students/people I don't know very well/people who despise me might see it, so I rein shit in.
There's gotta be a way to combine FB threads and the commenting interface here. Have your tech people look into this O'Neil.
What people do on Facebook like posting photos and random halfway funny status updates sometimes inspires ridiculously long threads. I know this is probably an obvious statement but doing that is no different than blogging. The only real difference is that for people who aren't trying to make a life/living writing online it's just a fun thing to do I think. This makes people like us shameless self-promoters who aren't really any different from the multitude of bores you find on Facebook. We're only different because we have slightly better writing and grammar skills and know a teeny tiny bit about putting shit up on a website.
Also, for those of us who write about political shit (you know like calling every conservative ever a closeted homosexual) blogs offer a kind of safe haven from all the random people you're friends with on Facebook who probably posted a bunch of angry comments on that link when you put it up. They probably screamed and hollered on Facebook but I betcha they didn't come here to do that.
My tech guys? Yeah, lemme just go check with them. Got em working in shifts.
You are correct, Facebook is blogging. Some people are better at it than others. Some people are worse. I am both.
Surprisingly no one ever really argues with any of my political shit on Facebook. Not sure what that is. I do have a few conservative friends I imagine. Mint E Fresh anyway.
Post a Comment