strange cousin susan

I’ve fallen into a delightful, yet torturous and somewhat hypocritical love affair with microblogging and myriad social networks over the past few weeks. It seems the longer I’m embracing the slackalicious side of my personality, the more social networks I join. Right now, the only networks I can recall off the top of my head that have escaped are Jaiku, LinkedIn, and Friendfeed. And they should be safe for at least a couple weeks more, since I’ve landed a temporary job.

A quick look at my Camino toolbar tells the ugly and wanton tale of a girl with far too much time on her hands and far too comfortable a chair and a love so strong for her laptop that she feels herself becoming more and more physically connected to it with each passing hour. The ease with which I can update across the vast span of the internets is, in part, a huge reason why I’ve broken down and done this, as well as breaking my old steadfast rule of instant messaging: NOML. NFW. (Not On My Laptop. No Fucking Way).

It’s so easy…too easy…to alert the world at large that I’ve scratched my ass and picked my nose concurrently as to frighten me. If I wasn’t so bewitched by the colorful wee favicons decorating my toolbar and at the same time, mesmerized by the IM list on the side of my desktop, it would be an easy relationship to break off, believe me. I lived without any type of IM for years, but now thanks to Adium, I can have it all, AIM, Yahoo, GTalk, Jabber, .mac, ad infinitum and with the creation of a ping.fm account and its subsequent addition to my buddy list, I can really and truly announce to the world what I’m doing, every minute of the day, if I chose, with but one IM to the pingbot. So, that being said, the multiple social network favicons I like to see so much are absolutely redundant and for all but two, I could blow the rest of them off the toolbar.

But I won’t.

At least not today.

Facebook and Plurk are definitely my social networks of choice these days. I’m through with Twitter, although I won’t delete my account, since I do have a few people there who are, as far as I’m aware, only listed there. And since I can update as easily as I can, Twitter’s not hurting me.

I like Facebook because it keeps me in touch with friends and family who have not joined the blogging revolution and very well may never do. If you care for a little irony served up with this post, please let me share something rather…well…ironic. It was the sister…the sister! who served as my Facebook dealer. “Just set up a page, Mick. It’s really easy and if you don’t like it, no harm, no foul.” This is the same girl who doesn’t understand the appeal of blogging, who keeps every single picture of Star and Bar marked as super-duper-Krazy-Glue-on-the-locks private on Flickr, who is still using Internet fucking Explorer, for Christ’s sweet sake: “What is this FIE-ERR-FOCKS of which you speak, Mickey?” And yet, and yet, she is the Facebook pusher; I think she may have even had a hand in getting two of my three cousins sucked in, too. Of course, she might have been working in conjunction with the third cousin…

Plurk is just plain fun and I find fellow Plurkers much friendlier than the Twitterers. I’ve been doing a lot of on-line reading about the pros and cons of the two services - and from what I’ve learned, the layout of Plurk may have a huge role in that, because the responses are aggregated and less likely to be lost in an ever increasing list of tweets. There was more of a learning curve I encountered with Plurk than Twitter, but in the end, it’s so worth it. Plus, there’s not the fuck-all annoying spam on Plurk, either. Plurk, then FTW!

As much as I do enjoy sharing the minutia of my life with people I know and even more I don’t know, it does concern me on the tinfoil-hat level of my personality. Unfortunately, I came across an online article about social networks and government monitoring and the idea has taken on a life of its own in my mind. On Brightkite specifically, users check in with their locations (as I do) and similar to other social network sites, update their status, link to their friends, tag themselves and others in photographs, spell out their political and religious beliefs, and a whole host of other things.

It’s a lark! It’s fun! It’s exciting!

Yeah, it is. But…

But what when it becomes expected, to be done without questioning it? The way things are going, with the government going a bit overboard in elasticizing the Fourth Amendment and who knows what else, I won’t be surprised if this type of thing is mandatory one day.

I try explaining this to my emm on almost a weekly basis when we go grocery shopping. She’s always johnny on the spot to whip out her goddamn Albertson’s Preferred Savings card — even if she’s not going to save any money with it – because that’s what the store expects her to do, regardless of benefitting from actual savings. I know some will throw up their hands and may think, “But Mickey Glitter, there’s no way she can remember if there are savings or not, when she finally gets to the cash register!” Believe me, she can. She can and she does - she never buys much, so there’s not much to remember. And she swipes that little bit of information-stealing plastic through the machine without a conscious thought about it. Unless I’m there and tell her there were no preferred savings on anything in her cart (even I can remember sometimes, but usually if there’s only one or two items), of course, mumbling the phrases “knee-jerk reaction,” “it’s no one’s business what brand of (insert item here, the more embarrassing, the better) you use,” etc., etc.

I do enjoy saying things like, “But, Mom, if you use my card to buy those four bottles of booze, I’m gonna be the one who starts getting information about Alcoholics Anonymous!” It’s especially amusing when other shoppers turn and look at me, frowning. My emm laughs at it, though.

This whole scenario stems from another experience I’ve had with my health insurance carrier and the meds I take for depression, but that’s a tale for another time.

In the spirit of full disclosure, though, I’m not innocent of being Preferred Savings Card free, either. I use it when I know I’m going to be spending a shitload of money because guaranteed, some things in my cart will be marked down. But if I’m there for just a few items? No way. It’s not worth my effort nor my purchases being recorded by some corporate Hal somewhere to save $0.41.

It’s like I posted today on Twitter and Plurk and Facebook and every other social network I’ve willingly joined

I know people think I’m paranoid and ridiculous, but I like to think I’ve got my eyes open. http://ping.fm/Bk81J

I love my social networking, believe me. And I love blogging. And I love saving money at the supermarket (when I’m not all lost…CLASH reference!). What I don’t like is being of two minds about any of it. It bugs me, it really does. I like it. I hate it. No, don’t. Stop. No, don’t. Stop! No, don’t stop!

Pssst…no one mention flat screen televisions and digital television signals and BlueTooth to her, because then she’ll really start wearing tinfoil hats!