Facebore

Social networking. I consider myself a vet when it comes to internet communication. My family purchased a household computer around 93, and with it came a trial subscription for AOL. That turned into a monthly bill and I spent many a late night chatting, IM-ing, and emailing at 14.4 kbps. Soon I was off to college and thrust into the glory of e-mail, AIM and ICQ. I could sit down at my computer, ready to churn out a 10-page comparison of Yojimbo and Darth Vader, and stay connected with friends old and new, high school chums and college classmates. I never lost touch with anyone, whether I wanted to or not.

Then I graduated, and networking evolved. During the two or so years after college I, along with most of my buddy list, found jobs that may have frowned upon running IMs or kept us away from computers entirely. Long gone are the days of simple e-mail and IM. New waves of "social networking," as dubbed by the media, rolled in one after another. Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter...all of this on top of mobile communication through texting and chirping. You either rode the wave of the future or stayed true to your old ways. All of the sudden, e-mails became too much work for certain friends. Others disappeared from your chat programs. Then, you fold and give way to a social networking site or two. Like me, you spent some good time decorating your page, whether it's tabled and homogonized like Facebook or looks like 1998 HTML-vomit like Myspace. You search for old friends, find new ones, add them all to your list, and viola...you're up with the times. You come home, day after day, checking your friends' updates and posting new and cool little widgets...and you slowly realize...the people you talk with on your social sites are the people you talk with every day regardless of internet access. Most of the other friends on your pages don't have time to sit and wait for all your crazy backgrounds and 3rd party links and gizmos to simply drop a line after they've already waited on the friends of higher priority (which is fine, there's nothing wrong with prioritzing friends, I'll fully admit that I do it).

My advice from all this: unless you're between the ages of 17-22 or are in the entertainment industry, don't even bother. Sure, it looks all cool and sexy, like smoking or strip clubs...but there's nothing but heartbreak and disappointment behind those bedroom eyes. You'll spend countless days logging in to your page, making sure everything you add says something about you, looking for acceptance from all of your friend requests. You'll reach out to old friends, but only hear from current ones, and after about a month and a half, you slide back into e-mailing and IM's with your usual suspects. The only real benefit from your remaining Myspace or Facebook page is that if you turn up missing or get involved in a hot political scandal, CNN and FOX News and MSNBC will have your page as the focal point of their daily broadcast for about a week. And your pictures will be scrolling by every 20 minutes.

So, like mom said, remember to wear clean underwear.