Put on your wetsuit and brace yourself: time to turn on Tweetdeck. Image credits: joevans1234
I don't know about you, but for me it all becomes a bit too much at times.
I read somewhere recently that, despite all the innovation and excitement, participating fruitfully in social media is rather like trying to take a drink from a firehose. It's true!
Inspired by Ken Wilson's "non-tweet" month in April, in May I turned off the live public ("all") stream in my Tweetdeck. I was still able to respond to RTs or public messages that referenced my username, not to mention DMs, but the overall effect was like winding back the tap so that a mere trickle wandered out of the hose.
Finally, I was able to have a quick drink without getting soaked.
It's now June, and I haven't been able to turn the open/all stream back on again yet. I sort of don't want to...
Facebook's got me a bit puzzled now as well. I'd opened up that particular tap a bit too far, and the result was inadvertently mixing a whole bunch if international teaching colleagues with childhood and university friends.
Now my blog auto-feed into Facebook makes me look like a bit of git to all my old friends and family, and I can't respond to funny little posts from friends (like the modified poster I saw yesterday with the caption "How about a nice big cup of shut the f%#k up") without appearing (with fairly good reason) slightly less than professional.
And that business/group page I opened up on Facebook for my online TOEFL teaching services? A nice steady stream of personal friendship requests from people who don't want to join me as official students but would still like to see my family photos and ask for personal help in passing their test on combined wall posts.
Oh, and I'm still trying to work out what Google's Buzz is all about. It's making little sounds there in my Gmail menu, but they sound more like the fizz variety at the moment.
And I tried Google Wave (like everyone else did) back at the end of last year.
Loved it.
Too bloody scared to go anywhere near it again.
So lately I've sort of turned off all this real-time social media and retreated back to writing blog posts, reading other blogs, and dedicating more time to really commenting on them. It's been nice. Manageable.
And instead of flailing delightfully through the Internethersphere from the launchpad of Tweetdeck, I've spent that time making something for the kids or - even better - actually playing with them or taking them out somewhere.
Once the kids are off to bed, I return to an old hobby. I read books.
But perhaps I've been missing something here...
Is all this social media stuff basically the challenge of human evolution?
Do we risk cutting ourselves off or falling hopelessly behind each time we log out for a bit?
Or are we just allowing ourselves to become tone deaf in order to cope with all this additional noise, layer upon layer of it, whipping at and around us like a passing meteor shower?
Is that the new normal?
:-)
