This past week I was introduced to a piece from Andrew Sullivan titled "Facebookistan" where he shared a contributors comments on what I will tag as the "evils of Facebook" Katja Grace opened the first paragraph, and I quote:
. . . while Katja Grace considers Facebook social conventions:
People who talk about themselves a lot are generally disliked. A likable person will instead subtly direct conversation to where others request the information they want to reveal. Revealing good news about yourself is a good sign, but wanting to reveal good news about yourself is a bad sign.
Best to do it without wanting to. This appears true of most human interaction, but apparently not of that on Facebook.
There is a sense of truth to this, I have in the past taken shots at how people use Facebook. My exception to this line of thinking is, I think the bigger point is being missed. Now before I state my point I want to go on record as I do have this yen to not only being likable but as factual as possible: I have no scientific proof or any case studies to make this claim, only observations, conversations and actual participation.
People can get lost in the genre if they let themselves, they tend to feel empowered by the keyboard and expectation of having an audience, they want to express themselves in an area that reaches a far greater range then their network could ever reach face to face. They connect with people they would never ever normally have reached without the platforms social networking offers.
I think Grace's comments miss the mark. People who talk about themselves are NOT disliked, some of the most outgoing, charismatic people I know break the very rule Grace seems to think is bad about Facebook which I find to be not only endearing but expected of the personalities.
We are looking at the change our next generations is in the process of - there will soon be no more "pen pal" experience. Our means of connecting is now digital and if I WANT to reveal news about myself or talk about myself and what I'm doing with myself ( in a PG family way of course ) then I will as that's what we now can do.
Get your head out of your butt Katja and tell us what you had for breakfast - I had a bowl of oatmeal topped with blueberries a sprinkling of organic cinnamon and a touch of honey . . . . mmmmm
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/facebookistan.html
http://michaelsola.posterous.com/time-drain-or-time-savings-your-call-but-face
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