Monday, November 24, 2008

My space

Ive resolved early on to limit my internet space, that is, the space that I can call my own, to this blog. I used to have a Friendster account and a MySpace account but decided to delete them. They took too much to maintain, I felt, and besides, the posse I run with IRL are pretty much internet virgins, and with grifter and the other Traveling Toreros hightailing it out of the motherland, I didnt think the 'social networking' thing was worth my while, what with the existence of that old reliable, email. (The Traveling Toreros also have a group blog.)

Then I heard about this thing called Facebook and that most of the office colleagues had Facebook accounts and so out of curiosity, I asked one of them to show me her Facebook page. I wasnt impressed. If anything, it was just like Friendster, only Facebook was more, well, insistent. Im sure you guys with Facebook accounts know what I mean. Everything you do on Facebook gets reported to everybody else on your Friends list. I found that creepy. Add to that the whole fandango of adding friends to your list. Did I forget anybody? What if I forgot to add somebody and he or she found out that I had a Facebook account? Would that person feel bad? What if somebody asked to be my friend and I dont remember who that somebody is even though that somebody gave every indication that he or she knosw who I am? Too much trouble, I thought. You have to tend to your Facebook page like a garden. I have a real garden at home, but it has the advantage of not being insistent, and the added benefit of actually giving you vegetables. So no Facebook for me, thank you very much.

Until one day, while Heartbreaker was tinkering with her Facebook page, I asked her, as a joke, to make a Facebook account for me. And she did, wouldnt you know it. I now have a Facebook page, and the entire panoply of people Ive havent heard from in years are right there within easy reach. And Ive fallen into the old pattern of checking it first thing in the morning like checking my garden whether it had new flower buds. (Truth be told, lest you form images in your head about my garden, it's not anything elaborate. Mostly I check out the critters that crawl along in it. Right now we seem to have a snail population explosion.) I still have to figure out what this thing or that thing does, but I can tell that it'll eat up a whole chunk of time if Im not careful. We'll see how it goes. If it doesnt work out, there's always email. And this blog.

4 comments:

grifter said...

the trick is not to keep checking every time you feel like.

Jenijenjen said...

And now you have Plurk! :D

Jego said...

Yes. Im still trying to make sense of that one. Haha. It's an all new experience for me.

Jenijenjen said...

I'll add you sa Facebook :D