The other
night I was sitting at home and found myself looking through the latest news on
Facebook and Twitter. Person A is cooking
tea, Person B says OMG!, Celebrity A has some exciting news but can’t tell
anyone, Celebrity B is slagging off Celebrity A. With these types of
regular status updates and tweets, it got me thinking. Were these social media
sites actually created for this kind of purpose?
I’d just like
to point out from the start, I use Facebook and Twitter and find them both useful
for sharing meaningful information. I
first discovered Facebook a few years back when I was travelling Australia and
found it a great way of keeping in touch with all the people I had met. It’s
also a handy way of keeping your family and friends up to date with your
whereabouts and photographs as you travel. I’m relatively new to Twitter, but
already prefer it to Facebook due to the fact there is more useful stuff being
shared.
Don’t get me
wrong, I’m partial to the ‘check in’ at the pub, rant about the football and
posting a few pictures from a night out. I don’t see anything wrong with that
(in moderation). I just feel that some people need to step away from the
computer every once in a while and actually interact with people a bit more without
using the Internet. Everybody’s different and we all have good days and bad,
but do we really need to post about it every five minutes? I enjoy reading
peoples funny stories, weekend shenanigans or watching music video posts, these
people are generally the people who post every once in a while, not every
available minute.
I’ve recently
discovered the ‘hide’ option on Facebook and might start using it for some of
the moaning and pointless updates, which are becoming a bit too regular. Are we really
that desperate for attention? Are we really that bored with things (If so, make
a change)? Did we think through that last comment before posting it out there? Admittedly,
I’m not the funniest or most interesting person out there, but I try and update with more jokey and
interesting posts. I think I prefer Twitter due to the fact that the majority
of the people I follow tweet interesting, funny and informative things, rather
than constantly moaning.
I think the
point I’m trying to make here is the interesting and funny updates and tweets,
in my opinion, seem to be few and far between these days. They’ve been replaced
with comments that I think sometimes should be heard and not read.
Maybe its
just a sign of the times and brings to our attention the fact that many of us
are bored with our current work/life situations? Or perhaps I’ve just gotten
the concept of these sites wrong and shouldn’t be using them, let alone writing
about them? Either way, I think we should be looking more at speaking to one
another face to face or on the telephone, rather than always using these sites
to vent our anger and frustrations every minute of the day. People have used
these ‘old fashioned’ methods in the past and will still be using them in the
future.
RANT OVER...
by Matt Ward
The Unofficial 'Brit Writers and Writers Everywhere' blog.
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