I admit it; I have succumbed. And indeed, resistance was futile.
Of course, I had heard about Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, but I felt I was above it all and, like any working mother, way too busy. Still, with my voracious appetite for news, I couldn’t avoid it, and I couldn’t avoid feeling at least a little left behind. I’d even ventured onto MySpace in search of trademark infringements for a client and felt utterly uncomfortable, knowing I was there for all the wrong reasons and feeling like a party-crasher.
Finally, it was my book club that forced me onto Facebook. Our fearless leader told us that she was done with e-mailing everybody and was using Facebook from now on for meeting invitations and publication of the book lists. It’s fun, they assured me. And not to worry, they would be my friends, so I wouldn’t be a digital wallflower.
So on I went and for the first few days it was a private party. The only friends I had were my book club folks and a couple of others, so I filled in the 25 random things about me, took a couple of inane quizzes and went along my merry way. It was like a little digital meeting room. I’d log in every now and then, fill in my status, and accept the friend invitations that came my way. Then, suddenly, I had fifty friends and was getting tagged in other people’s posted photographs. I got comments from people I hadn’t seen in 25 years on my 25 random things. An old boyfriend or two showed up. Pretty soon I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you are naked in front of everyone you know. The suspicious part of my brain lit up, and I considered dropping off altogether.
But quitting is not my style, and I began to worry that I was starting to get grouchy about new technology the way my grandmother was about my getting a law degree. I could not abide that, not just because of my personal principles but because as a mother I will have to know something about the world my boys will be diving into, even if I only stay knee-deep myself. So I learned my way around, figured out how to un-tag myself from photos I don’t like and to hide the people who post too much or turn my home page into a forum for discussing ideas I don’t agree with. I can share the news stories I like without having to copy links into e-mail the old-fashioned way, and I can see the digital tidbits my friends recommend. I’m not an expert, and I don’t need to be. I just need to be able to control it to the extent I can and enjoy it for what it is.
Just as I was getting uppity about Facebook, I kept hearing more and more about Twitter. At first, it seemed to me like Facebook without the meat. Statuses only? A hundred and forty characters? But then I thought about it, and figured it could be like writing a status haiku. No rambling allowed, and that has to be good. No quizzes, no electronic food fights, just whatever was flowing out of the tips of people’s fingertips, straight off the tops of their heads. But the part that really appealed is following people I don’t know and learning something about people whose lives are totally unconnected with mine. Where Facebook is self-revelatory, Twitter is voyeuristic, and even educational.
Unlike Facebook, where the idea is that you are connecting with people you know, with Twitter you can follow anyone, any stranger, ranging from President Obama to Ashton Kutcher. Unless they specifically block you, you can be privy to the minutiae of the life of anyone who’s willing to tweet about it. Some people have interesting lives; a lot have lives less interesting than mine. I can follow some girl in L.A. with tattoos and piercings and live an unencumbered life vicariously, 140 characters at a time. Or hear bits and pieces about my favorite actor’s trip to Ireland with his family, making me ache to go there myself with my own.
What I’ve found amazing is how much you can learn about a person’s sensibilities from the tiny posts and links he chooses to share. Surely it’s not enough to base a judgment on, but it makes me think about how the little interactions I have all day might form a picture of me to an outsider. And I like reining in my own multi-tasking mind for long enough to condense a thought into what amounts to about two lines of text. The simplicity of it in a world where I use no fewer than 15 passwords in a day is satisfying in itself.
I’m aware that the trend is to say that social media is already experiencing drop-out and that people are coming and going from it in droves. It will change, as everything does, but there is no doubt it is here to stay in some form. So I have surrendered, which in this case is really just another way of staying in the game.