I'm becoming increasingly disenchanted with social networking. Through MySpace I'm linked to many other writers, who care as little about me as I care about them because we were both trying to push our books when we linked. Through Facebook I'm linked to a small but odd mix of friends, family, and other writers, and I'm leery of posting anything there because my writing life and my personal life don't mix well.
Because I've not published any books lately, I've not much to promote (Go to amazon.com now and buy my books. All of them.), and because personal information is available to the world once it's posted on Facebook, I've been cautious about what to post, if I post at all.
I have connected with some lost friends and family, and for that I'm grateful. So, while I'm reluctant to leave either site on the off-chance I might yet connect with another lost friend or family member, there's no good reason for me to remain linked to so many people.
Therefore, at the pace of two or three a week, I've been purging my "friends."
My criteria? If you have more than 500 friends, you won't notice when I unfriend you. If you haven't logged on to your MySpace page in six months or more, you may not even remember you have a MySpace account and won't notice when I unfriend you. If we haven't swapped some kind of personal message in some form through one medium or another for six months or more, you probably won't notice when I unfriend you.
And so, one by one, I'm saying a silent farewell to my social network.
But I'll keep hanging abound here for a while. This I enjoy.
3 comments:
I'm glad you're hanging around the blog world, Michael. Your's is a regular stop for me!
Thanks, Sandra.
The blog serves as a journal of sorts, giving me a reason to keep record of what I write, submit, sell, and see published. As such, it keeps me focused on writing in a way that MySpace and Facebook don't.
If I occasionally entertain or provide a tip that helps someone else, that's just--cliche alert--icing on the cake.
Always glad that you are keeping the blog going.
I don't fiddle with MySpace or Facebook as both are expressly forbidden by my employer. I am fooling with Crime Space, Inked In and Twitter. Social networking and promotion are not easy for me and I don't do them easily. However, it seems more and more that such activities are required.
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