Leo Laporte posted this http://leoville.com/buzz-kill blog post a few hours ago. I’ve been following Leo since I was first introduced to “The Screensavers” on TechTV. I’ve listened to him rant and rave about the policy of this or that ISP, heard him jump on the bandwagon for every new and shiny thing that someone created to help communication online. There have been times when he has asked, although sometimes it sounded more like he was just asking to say that he asked, if people were really worried or upset about the same things that he is.
Then there is this blog post. I think he finally got it. He finally saw what it was like to be one of the other people on the ‘net. One of the people that don’t have a radio show and a plethora of podcasts. One of the people that send their thoughts and dreams out into the collective consciousness that we call the ‘net, and no one notices.
Except for a brief time in 1995 when I and everyone else had a personal website on geocities, tripod or angelfire, I have been lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to social media. I didn’t really start blogging until a few years ago. I never used myspace, ironically because it reminded me too much of geocities, tripod and angelfire. I created a facebook account to see some pictures a friend posted of the work he was doing on his house. Then after a year or so people started to find me on there. So I started using it, now the account is suspended, and has been for a while. Why? Because I wanted control of my content and I wanted to control who could see it. The moving target that was facebook’s privacy policy was just too much of a roller coaster ride.
I have a twitter account, there are some people that follow me. Would they notice if I stopped posting? Same for identi.ca and buzz. I am waiting for buzz to go the way of wave, sorry Gina.
Everyone wants to feel connected to friends, family and even complete strangers. I know and communicate with more people online than I do in person or even over the phone. I have to admit, I am a bit of an edge case, working 3rd shift means that most people are kind of unconscious when I am awake, and vice versa.
So I tell myself that microblogging and a blog and email is a way for me to communicate with people that I would otherwise not be able to reach.
The problem with just broadcasting and not actually connecting is that you don’t know if anyone is even reading what you are putting out there. How do I connect? How do I change this? I don’t know. For the most part talking on the phone is stressful. I feel like there needs to be talking going on the entire time, otherwise it is a waste. It’s not like being able to sit on the swing at my parents house with my mom and just watch the trees sway in the breeze, or the bees buzz around her flowers, or the humming birds flitting up to the 6 feeders they have outside. Or riding with my dad to the dump on a Saturday to drop off the weeks trash. Yeah we usually talk, but that’s not the important part. It’s being there. The connection.
And after I have typed all of this out, I am just going to broadcast it. It will be linked on my twitter account, which buzz will pick up.
There won’t be many people that even read this blog post.
lopsa