The Social

The internet is a social place. You meet people, share things, you “talk” without having to talk. The irony, of course, is that if you’re not very social in real life, you can still get your social fix in cyberspace and a lot of people do exactly that. Good for them.

But there’s too much irony going on. This starts with Facebook. And I enjoyed it for a while and I’m still there but I’m not sure how much I enjoy it anymore. Then came Twitter and to me, this space was something I “got” right away. I get most of my news there, I’ve met countless people though it (even if I’ve never physically met many of them) and have made new friends and, of course, I do my writing thing, which has exploded into something I could never have foreseen. There’s Tumblr but I never got into it, for whatever reason, and so never joined. I’m on Goodreads, a social space for booklovers. I’m on VYou, which is social media with video. (You can see some of the places I’ve hitched my hat on the links page at the bottom of the home page.) I’m on Instagram, the photo sharing site. On Quora. Then Google, trying once again to become bigger than it already is, brought out Google+. This is still new and I’m there too, and I’m trying that out.

I just signed up for webdoc. Which seems like Tumblr but for adults. Maybe. I’m also on A Small World. I’m very social. Perhaps overly so.

For what? At what point does all of this become too much? I guess that’s the question being asked, especially on the eve of Google+ going from invitation only to open to all. How social do we want or need to be? What’s the tipping point? Why are all these spaces separate from each other? Shouldn’t I have some master social page and then post and chose where I want to post it? Is the internet heading back to the day of the different gated communities all trying to blow each other up? I mean, isn’t Google big enough already?

Just asking.

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