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An Open Letter to Skeptics on Google+. Go Back to Facebook!
This morning I started penning a short little post on Google+ that quickly spiralled out of control. It became long enough that I thought I'd share it here as well, especially because the blog's been a little light on content leading up to tomorrow's grand debut of my super-secret science advocacy project! Tune in tomorrow to see what that is!
The reason I wrote the following is because Google+ is unique in the social media landscape. I've never met so many skeptics, atheists, and secularists so quickly! For whatever reason the social dynamics of that service are such that large droves of like-minded people can get in touch with one another very quickly.
Follow Me, Oh Shepherds
Hello world! Or at least, hello to the minuscule slice of the world brilliant enough to read this blog with regularity. Ok, wait. That makes me sound arrogant, doesn't it? I'm not trying to say that I'm brilliant, and I'm certainly not saying the stuff you'll find on this page is brilliant either. I just wanted to compliment the fine readers of this rag, because I believe they deserve it.
Brad Blogspeed, Facebooked!
Did you know you can get the blog right to your Facebook account, for free?
"Well of course it's free, jerk wad..." you might say. "...you think I'd actually pay to read this ridiculous collection of ill-conceived nonsense?"
Er, no, I guess. Could have put it a little nicer though. I guess I was trying to be a bit of a salesman there, but for good reason. See, many of the blog's readers aren't friends of mine on Facebook, and to them I wanted to provide a single-click avenue to share posts from the site. Facebook is THE place where people disperse digital content nowadays, and to be honest I can use all the help I can get.
See I'm terribly insecure, and if using the Brad Blogspeed Facebook page helps people to share stuff from the site just a little bit more regularly, it would go a long way towards helping me improve my self image. With one click you can 'Like' this silly blog, and by then sharing it with your friends, it will make me feel wanted.
Also I'm a fat boy. Please, pity me.
Full Disclosure
Google Calls Me a Failure. Now You Can Too!
In having a look at my most recent statistics on Google Analytics, I thought it was time to come clean. I've always tried to be (some would say embarrassingly) honest on this site, so I might as well take that approach to it's natural conclusion. Time to go right at the heart of the matter and admit how this blog is really doing.
Imagine you, the few regular readers of this rag, are the stockholders in a company, and I'll represent the CEO. As caretaker of an enterprise you're invested in*, I'm required to divulge any pertinent information regarding the potential success or failure of that enterprise. Well here's where I do just that, and Google Analytics is how I know what to tell you.
Virtual Reality is Virtual
Why You Should Stop Worrying and Love the Tweet
I bet you never thought I'd post a country song to this blog, right? I mean, many readers have never met me and have no idea what musical tastes I might have, but it's usually a safe bet that most rational people from towns of a population over 5,000 don't listen to southern twang. I don't usually, rest assured, but to those who enjoy it please feel free to play the following clip while you read on.
Kinda fun, right? When I first got the idea for this post I had heard the title of the song but not the song itself. My intention was to tear up the concepts at play a little bit, and it still is, but upon hearing it I realized just how playful the tone is. Social commentary is always so much easier to take when it's done with humour.
So, uh... I just flew in and boy are my arms... never mind.
One Me for All of Thee
I had this friend. Let's call him Daryl. (especially because that was his name)
Daryl was a former coworker with a great store of wit but a short supply of social graces. He was admittedly grumpy, and hard to deal with, although once you broke through his gruffness there were usually laughs to be had aplenty.
One day, fairly recently, after a Facebook post in which I mentioned suffering from some mild ailment, Daryl chimed in. His comments, something along the lines of my discomfort coming from a masturbation accident, were funny, but perhaps not appropriate for a public Facebook discussion. Or were they? I guess that's the crux of the matter.
The way I remember it, after he brought up that his comments probably weren't appropriate, I agreed, but only in the truest sense of discussion. I wasn't at all angry, and I would never delete his comments, but Daryl and I had a history of discussing things frankly. He lamented that Facebook was too washed down, that one couldn't be as frank as they would be amongst friends. In a rough paraphrase of his words he countered that "eventually you have to get tired of everything you say being visible to Grandma."
Now, you're hearing this from one side, so I'll try and represent what happened next as fairly as I can. I countered that in social networking one presents a 'homogenized self' to the world, made up of all the selves one usually presents to different cliques. More on that later, but something about what I said must have really annoyed Daryl, because that was the last I ever heard from him.
Again, I meant it purely analytically, and was in no way angry or judgemental towards Daryl's actions. Nonetheless, he removed me as a friend on Facebook, and that was that.
I in no way wish to drag the guy through the mud in a one sided debate, and I don't intend this article to state my case against him or something. There's no way for me to know or understand how he interpreted my comments, or what his general feelings were towards me before that discussion, Again, Daryl wasn't socially the most transparent dude in the world, so I can't even be sure that the guy ever liked me. Perhaps our casual friendship was at best a very uneasy union, and didn't need much of a push to send flying apart.
I intend no ill will towards the guy, and this article isn't about him. (Although it's certainly not an apology either) I use the story merely as a lens into the subject that I promised to revisit, the idea of the Facebook 'self', the Twitter 'self', the virtual self which we broadcast out to the digital universe.
This is something I've thought quite a bit about, actually. As many of my Facebook friends will know, I tend to update my status regularly, and I'm sure many would say to excess. When I do so I usually go for a laugh, although I imagine that goal often goes unachieved.
Now, if you know me on a personal level, and have ever had the great misfortune of being at a pub with me, you'll know that my in-person sense of humour tends to be a bit raunchier than my Facebook one. I'm basically a big child, and I love me some pee-pee-ka-ka jokes... sue me.
But I stand by my assertion. Social networking sites like Facebook present society with a new problem; how does a person behave when his/her comments are visible to all his friends and colleagues, all at once?
People have developed different strategies for dealing with it. Some keep their friends list limited to a select few, people with whom they feel comfortable sharing the social aspects of their lives, but nobody else. While I'm sure this is a way to 'keep it real', perhaps in the way Daryl would have preferred, I think it's increasingly becoming an outdated solution. Social networking is becoming ubiquitous in our culture and in the years to come I think it will be considered more awkward to leave a colleague or family member off of your friends list than for them to find out that you're really into Death Metal.
Another solution is to say almost nothing on Facebook or Twitter, throwing up an occasional generic update and watching the fun from the outside. Me, say nothing? Let's throw that out the window right now.
And the third solution, the one which I've settled on, is to be the homogenized self. Now, this may sound like an admission of phoniness, but I'm a different guy depending on my current environment. Perhaps to a greater degree than others (although honestly, I suspect less) I become a slightly different person in different situations. There's 'work Brad' and 'family Brad' and 'couples-scene Brad' and 'hanging-with-the-boys Brad', and all these people must be amalgamated into 'Facebook Brad'.
There's thought that goes into it, I won't lie. I must self-edit and make sure that whatever I post is suitable, for the large part, for everyone. That may seem pathetic and inorganic, a contrived way to operate. Maybe that's what offended Daryl. However, I think it's an act of social flexibility we all inherently perform in one way or another, every day.
When you, dear reader, go to work in the morning, you obviously behave slightly differently than when you're out with friends on a Saturday night. When you're around the water cooler with peers, you behave differently then when stuck at a conference with the management team. When you're at Christmas dinner with crazy Aunt Betsy, you behave differently still.
What social networking demands, are you to be active in it and inclusive of everyone, is that all these behaviours be reconciled.
Now, before you go accusing me of being an apologist for social fence sitting, keep in mind that I'm talking about all behaviours, and not just the comfortable ones. That's one of the reasons that I've decided, through this blog and Facebook, to come clean to family and friends about my atheistic world-view. Believe me, it's an uncomfortable prospect, but to exist as a 'whole person' online, I feel like I must include all the parts of that whole, including those that may make people uncomfortable.
What I try not to do is make any part of that whole larger or more prominent in comparison to my general personality than is naturally the case. There's no need to shove my beliefs in anyones face in an effort to offset their potential impact, to anticipate disapproval by others and therefore get all dickish about it.
I think it's a fair and honest way to be, although fraught with the potential for self misrepresentation. Only your closest besties will ever to be able to judge if the virtual you is anywhere close to the actual you. Perhaps I failed that examination in Daryl's eyes. Who knows.
But be sure that people are watching and judging and comparing the two. So be honest, be frank, and most importantly, be your various selves.
