Socially Awkward

I don’t even know what social networking is anymore. The last four or five years we have experienced an explosive need to “socially network” via websites like Friendster, MySpace, Facebook and other less popular knock-offs. Personally, I am no better off because of these sites. I would even consider myself worse off and let me give you some examples why.

When AOL first came out, I was lucky enough to have it. I barely used it at first. It was interesting, but I still would rather be outside building a ramp I could jump with whatever rolling apparatus I could find (i.e. Rollerblades, skateboards, lawn chairs duct taped to skateboards, pillows duct taped onto snowboards bolted onto a skateboard which was our homemade version of a street luge, and so on). The most social networking we did back then was to beg Tyler Pike’s mom to let us sign on for ten minutes and try as hard as possible to find a girl anywhere in the world that would call us or send us boob photos. Dial-up was slow and it cost $.10 a minute back then, so we had to work fast and with extreme diligence, but we always failed. And when we did we went back to playing F-Zero and forgot all about it.

Nowadays, these sites are like heroin and school aged kids are like addicts jonsing for a fix. I saw an MTV reality show yesterday where this group of girls ran into the woods with a laptop and one bar of Wi-Fi access to get on their MySpace. How is that any different from a strung out prostitute sucking dick in an alley for a quick shot of some black tar? Personally, I don’t see the difference.

But young adults aren’t any better. The only reason I have MySpace is because I was sick of having this conversation with people my own age:

Person: Hey, what’s your MySpace?
Me: I don’t have one.
Person: (Disgusted look on their face) WHAT!? Everyone has MySpace. Dude, you gotta get a MySpace!

And they were right. To stay connected as a comic in New York City, you gotta have a MySpace. You could post videos that no one watched. You could write blogs that no one reads. And, the best part, you could post 10 bulletins about a great show you have coming up that no one would come to. But regardless of that, you couldn’t stop doing it. Every comic thought that any minute your MySpace would blow up and people will be posting pictures of your version of the Su-Fi to your comments section. It never happened. It was just an addiction that took away from legit networking.

Then came Facebook. It appealed to me because it seemed more streamline and was void of the “Sorry! an unexpected error has occurred” errors that MySpace was drowning in. Plus, It was private at the time and only college alum and students could sign up, so I saw it as a chance to filter out weird strangers and keep in touch with my real friends. I soon discovered that my real friends are even more annoying than anything MySpace threw at me.

They aren’t annoying in real life. They are annoying in the social networking sense because every time I sign in to Facebook, I am greeted with something similar to what you see here. How much shit can my friends possibly be involved in? They want to know my favorite movies, colors and music. They demand I fight them either as a hobo, zombie or vampire. They like to “Superpoke” me – whatever that means. I can’t keep up with it all and as time goes on, it gets worse and worse.

It’s more stressful for me to sign onto Facebook now because I have 20 events I know I cannot go to, but am physically incapable for clicking the “I’m Not Attending” button. I always go to the “Maybe Attending.” It’s in my blood. Men in my family compulsively click the “Maybe Attending” button (i.e. birthday parties, Christmas, life events, etc.) but they never show up.

I often wonder what the next fad will be. I am personally burnt out on all of this social networking and only keep my pages active for promotional reasons at this point. Oh, and to keep the “Growing Gift” my wife sent me on Facebook alive. Part of me hopes that Face to Face communication is the next fad. People talking in person. Telling stories and physically LOL’ing. Then someday soon I can hear someone say:

Person: (Disgusted look on their face) WHAT!? Everyone has a mouth. Dude, you gotta get a mouth.

Click below to enjoy a song I wrote two years ago called “MySpace.”

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