Here’s One For All The New Media Douchebags In The House.
So, I’m sitting here in my office, working diligently (seriously, for any potential employers out there, I’m working my ass off). I’m also seeing tweets fly by, and reading blog posts by Robert “I have more followers that God (literally, 31,617 vs 600 as of this posting)” Scoble shilling the latest New Media Douchebag Approved™ social blogging network whatever. Meanwhile, over in my email client a funny thing is happening. People I know, people I would even go so far as to call friends are emailing back and forth, planning a happy hour gathering for tomorrow (and incidentally accusing each other of being either hippies or red-necks).
Email! I know, it’s fucking shocking. I mean, it’s so 1990’s. No Loopt, no Twitter, not even a dynamic group blog leveraging social networks. Fucking email. Even worse, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, some of us will actually telephone people not on the mailing list to give them the heads up. We may even use landlines.
The point behind the snark here? This is what actual friends do; and this is the point that the New Media Douchebags fail to miss. Things like Twitter, and MySpace, and blogs, and Loopt are there to enhance the social experience, not replace it. People make “social” networks; not technology.
Posted on August 7th, 2008 under Posts • Tags: blogorama, friends, new media douchebags. • 
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August 7th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
Oh, man. NOW you’re starting to piss me off. Next thing you know you’ll be telling everyone that you go outside during the day and TALK to actual people.
I really thought you were going to keep this plausible. You can’t talk to anyone. I mean, there is no life except for the person who is your “number one” friend this week.
Dammit. This is 2008.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
You look lonely.
My daughter’s wedding was today. I don’t have any photos yet. My iPhone was the music source. The Flash Gordon soundtrack version of The Wedding March was the accompaniment I walked her down the aisle.
Many friends of the groom were there; very few family and friends of the bride. Her own mother couldn’t manage to make it. I wasn’t surprised. She’s a bitch. That’s why I divorced her 30 years ago.
The bad thing is that I have 10 or so gallons of microbrew IPA left over and no one to help me drink it. If you pop up this way in the next day or two, I’ll share.
Wifey-poo saved enough leftovers from the reception that we can eat like decadent kings, and drink like homeless lottery winners.
Come on up.
Rip
August 10th, 2008 at 5:24 am
Ho my God and let him bless Allah. And here I was thinking that Facebook was a tool that would let me live my life without having to actually meet someone. Does this mean I have to turn my phone off flight mode? Aren’t all parties virtual? And why haven’t anyone soldered up a wlan card that can be directly connected to the brain? Imagine just thinking “www.beer-download.org”; and 3 gallons of virtual beer would be instantly delivered to your bloodstream, making all the pains of the raininfested physical world go away.
Although I doubt this would be a good thing in the long run, since the taste of beer would be lost. Unless there is a script one can run that would make the tastebuds force-quit and reboot in an eternal beer-tasting frenzy. Ish.
I hate Sundays.
August 19th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
[...] A couple of posts back I went on one of my semi-annual rants about “social networking” and the fact that the New Media Douchebag contingent that most promotes “social” technology is the group that least gets it. The group of friends that I mentioned in that previous post is a great example of people using “social networking” (in their case MySpace) to enhance, rather than replace actual relationships. For us, MySpace is basically nothing more than a community message board, where we can post pointless little messages or coordinate a happy hour. The real relationships are based in the real world. [...]