The Tao of Social Networking

Having been born in 1971, I am a card carrying member of an elite group of people affectionately called “Generation-X”. I would like to believe that I’m too young to be considered “old” and too old to be considered “young”, but let’s cut the shit here… I’m fucking old. But I do feel us old Generation-X’ers do have a slight technological advantage over other generations in that, our grasp of life before the internet is just as strong as our obsession with it. In broad terms, my children can’t conceive of a corded rotary phone with no voicemail or call waiting any more so than my parents would want to talk to their girlfriends and drinking buddies using only 140 characters. I on the other hand have fond memories of having to dial 0 for the operator to get directions to a restaurant, digging for change in my pocket to use a payphone, using our UHF/VHF television as monitor for my old Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, being in complete awe when we first got AOL and hearing those distinctly technical guttural noises and thinking, “Oh my God! That’s the future squeaking at me!” I also remember when I wanted to talk to someone I had to do it the old fashion way… awkwardly, uncomfortably and unknowingly; I knew nothing about them but the basic information I could ascertain from my immediate five senses… they looked good, they smelled decent enough, the pitch of their could be lower, but fuck it… proceed and say hello or whatever best line happened to be. There was no profile to look at beforehand, no simple visual assessment of how many mutual friends you have or how many friends they have accumulated, there were no graphic shots of their genitalia on display, there was just you and the other person and you just pressed your luck.

My, how the times have changed; for better and for worse. Having been an admitted and uncontrollable MySpace junkie for years, I have since dumped that drug and have been pumping my veins with healthy doses of the heroin better known as Facebook. As of date I also take healthy daily tokes of Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest and I still freebase Yahoo! Messenger when I get antsy. And while I do enjoy the high of being plugged in and connected to what feels like the pulse of the world, I do have amazingly pleasant memories of being unplugged and all the emotional accoutrements involved with a text-less, screen-less existence.

Along with all of the aforementioned social networking sites I also peruse Second Life, an online virtual world where you create an avatar and meet, greet and social with other peoples’ avatars. It is the most seductive, addictive and horrifying manifestation of ontology gone wild whereas who you want to be is interacting with what other people want to be, almost like a little puppet show, only no one ever gets to see who the real puppet masters are… and why would you when your puppet is a 7 foot tall, dark skinned, goateed muscle bound wrestler who wears tight jeans, army boots and a cut off V-neck camouflage baby tee (fuck you, he’s my avatar, he’ll wear what I goddamn tell him to wear). Funny name, Second Life. That’s what were all doing, living in this second life, trying to deal with (or avoid) the first one. But you can’t blame the puppet can you? You can’t blame the stage either. Why are we playing in the first place? Why aren’t we meeting first then playing second? Why aren’t we first getting coffee and talking and getting to know each other before we pull out our puppets?  Or is this a concept whose clarity is too Sony Walkman muffled Lo-Fi compared to Grindr’s immediate HiFi gratification? Or rather, has social networking replaced being actually social?

My friends and I seem to be on the diametrically opposite ends on the matter, particularly when it comes to Facebook. While I will admit that I am a Facebook junkie, I would also have to say that I don’t take it too seriously in the sense that I don’t give a lot of emotional weight to the information I give or receive from the site. I check in, I post something gratuitously offensive and/or see other people’s gratuitously offensive posts, I get a laugh, I get back to doing whatever I was doing. I don’t mind “friending” complete strangers. If you’re remotely cute and we have mutual friends (as of date I’ve got over 1,700 friends so there’s a good chance somebody knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody… that I’ve given head to and decided to friend me on Facebook) I’ll friend you. I don’t take it that seriously in the sense that I only friend my “real” friends. That never made sense to me. If you are indeed my “real” friend, we’re going to be talking long before I log on and long after I log off, I almost don’t need you as a Facebook friend because more than likely I’m going to be sitting down and talking with you in the flesh in an hour or so and besides… you know you’re my friend… you don’t need to fertilize my crops in Farmville to prove that dude… we’re good…

Now my “First Life” friends and acquaintances have almost the opposite paradigm whereas they would consider themselves to be “casual” Facebook users but have fairly strict rules when I comes to Facebook relationships and interactions. Recently a “First Life” friend of mind very proudly proclaimed that he is not a “Friend Collector” on Facebook in the sense of just randomly accepting friendships from any schmuck that comes along. There has to be some sort of commonality, some sort of connection, some sort of kinship, he just doesn’t accept people just to accept them. I have heard this from several of my “First Life” friends and some of them have even went so far as to post on their profiles that they are eliminating the majority of their Second Life friends and only keeping the real First Life friends. Now I don’t want to be cynical, and maybe it’s because I might have a different definition of the word “friend” or maybe I just simply don’t have that many but think about it… if you just, for example… discovered a lump… on your breast, on your testicle… how many people (outside of family) would you immediately tell? To me… those first responders are friends, and for me, that number is on one hand. And those single digit First Life friends of mine… again… don’t need to fertilize my crops in Farmville, they know I love them. And Facebook, well… that’s just where I play, it’s the place where I claim my occupation to be a pimp and fluffer, where my religious views are “Suck it Jesus, THIS is my God now!” and post articles with headlines like, “MAN DIES AFTER EATING COCAINE FROM BROTHER’S BUTT.” It’s entertainment. It’s fun. And yes, I collect friends. I would be the aforementioned “Friend Collector” with the thought that if I can make you laugh and you can make me laugh, under the right circumstances, this Second Life friendship could indeed turn into a pretty decent First Life friendship one day, but if not… fuck it… I’ll be in L.A. laughing at your cat videos and you’ll be North Carolina looking up Mysophilia because I mentioned it in a post and all will still be right with the world. (Mine at least, can’t speak for those damn mysophiliacs.)

But I think that should be the goal for all of these social networking sites, to crossover to the other side and get to the human you’re networking with. I recently got a position in marketing at my job and one of the golden rules of social marketing I keep hearing over and over again is the idea that social networking and social marketing are only options you should be using to support the traditional marketing schemes you already have in place. In other words, if you were handing out fliers to promote your business before, don’t stop handing them out and get on Facebook, continue to hand them out and post them on Facebook also. Basically, online social networking isn’t a substitute for networking, just an option. And that’s true all around. I don’t think it’s foolhardy to get on Facebook in hopes of expanding your circle of friends, I do think it is foolhardy, however, to think that’s all you got to do. Remember, it’s just an option. Whatever you were doing before, you just use it to spread the word.

My experiences with all these social media platforms have been hit and miss. Every blue moon I’ll actually meet face to face with a Second Life friend and have a pleasant experience but more often than not I’m usually met with a boatload of Generation-Y, ADHD, Eli Roth cum Robert Rodriquez horror fantasy fused trepidation whereas they think the one and only reason why I want to meet them at Starbucks at 1:00 p.m. is so I can have them naked and chained in a hostel with my other victims by 10:00 p.m., “No dude, I’ve only got 30 minutes for lunch and it’s across the street from my job, you really need to stop watching ‘Saw’ on repeat man.”

Then there is also the unfortunate experience of people who “just don’t get you” which is fine, but makes you question why would they friend you in the first place. This might go against my “Friend Collector” theory of accepting the majority of people who ask for a friendship but if your profile is of a baby tattooed with a swastika… I’m probably going to take a pass on that one. My profile proudly exhibits the controversial 2007 Folsom Street poster the depicts various leather clad Folsom attendees displayed in an imitation of Leonardo da Vinci‘s famed "Last Supper". Some random “friend” who I collected who we’ll call Jake but whose real name is Dezon Jones got super offended by it and began berating me, on my public wall and in private messages, about how offensive the picture was and how shocked he was at me and my behavior… keeping in mind, I have never met this dude. He went on to seriously ask me if I was actually a pimp. To wit I replied, “So this is the deal... usually I would have deleted/blocked u by now, but I'm gonna try something a little different. We don't know each other at all, but I assume U HAVE to know that I consistently post GROSSLY offensive stuff ALL THE TIME... because I'm grossly offensive. Can you handle that? Because it sounds like you're trying to make a judgment call on my "pimpdom" and if u are... then I'm probably the worst aspects of who you think I am... and maybe my Facebook page is too much for you...” To wit he deleted his friendship from my page and blocked me (LOL!) but not before replying, “So this is the deal... usually I would ignore such assumptive remarks from those like you by now…” it goes on for another really long paragraph but I never got past that sentence, I just deleted the whole conversation thinking that if he can’t bother to come up with something original I’m not going to bother reading the rest of his bullshit. And he lives up north in Oakland near San Francisco if you can believe that… where Folsom takes place! Well slap my back and call me a pimp!

But even still, even after all of that, I would still have to say that as a whole, I enjoy this brave new world. I do truly appreciate the Second Life friendships I’ve made. I look at them with a sense of guarded optimism, but I still very much consider them something to forward to. And with the love I have in my life and the work that I do… that’s all I really need.

My Second Life avatar, by the way, has an Ohm tattoo on his right bicep. I, in this First Life, have Shiva tattooed on my left bicep. My puppet and I aren’t too different from each other. I mean, I’m not seven feet tall and muscle bound, but we both like to socialize, with all the bumps along the way. You’ll even hear him sing a Tori Amos tune every once in a while. He’s not real. He’s a puppet. But if you listen, you’ll hear me. And if you decide to talk, I listen to you. And you ever want to get a cup coffee afterwards, I’ll promise to leave the hardware at home.