Social networking: The best way to never actually talk to someone ever again

This was Sallie's idea, but Dan wrote it up first

Social networking exploded five or so years ago with the popularity of Myspace and Facebook. Otherwise shy people got to doctor a photo of themselves, (or someone else) make a profile page that makes them seem more interesting than they are and make other recluse friends over the Internet. Eventually, those that were social butterflies found out about the trend and exploded the numbers of people on these sites. The recluses were able to make friends with the popular people only because the popular people needed numerical data on how many people loved them the most. I personally didn’t hear about this until a friend of mine wanted me to check out her Myspace profile, but I couldn’t look at her pictures unless I signed up. And so the name “Sonic Death Monkey” was born on Myspace.

Sal: I learned about Facebook first, but had no idea what it was or how it worked. I got an e-mail from a classmate after I started going to Mizzou telling me to sign up, so I did. My account sat dormant for months. Little did I know what I was getting myself into.

Myspace certainly has its advantages, like customizable html code and a top friends list. However, Myspace also has many disadvantages like customizable html code and a top friends list. When people, especially those that thrive on the Internet, are given the freedom to customize their profiles to fit their personalities, you get Myspace pages filled with songs, videos, flash games, celebrity photos, sports insignias and banners. If I want to leave them a message, I have to scroll down their page for 14,000 years.

Sal: Honestly, some of those profiles should be presented with a warning stating that viewers of the profile may experience seizures. The bright colors and flashing applications are a health hazard if stared at too intently.

The friends list is only irritating because it started the phenomena of collecting eFriends. Hours after joining Myspace, I had crappy local bands, porn sites and people I’ve never met asking me to be their friend. I humored them briefly, but after checking some of their profiles and noticing they had 35,000 friends, I decided to leave the flock and block the user.

The other downfall of Myspace is the good chance that half the links you click will merely direct you to an error page. Many times I blogged on Myspace, wrote for a half an hour, clicked submit, got the error, and when I clicked back, blog was gone, Dan was cursing and had a new blog topic.

Sal: Which is when one of three things happen: 1) You give up; 2) You start drafting blogs in MS Word; or 3) You realize that what you were writing was probably too long in the first place and try again with a version that’s shorter and easier to read. I typically opted for option three.

Facebook was my next endeavor. Although I didn’t get to put the latest band no one new on my page to prove how cool I was, I loved the simplicity of Facebook. Only people I added as friends could see my profile, and I had zero spammers. Facebook eventually added their own blog sort of thing and applications.

Applications remove the need to customize html code, and you just choose a bunch of prewritten code to put all over your page. This caused a similar problem that was happening on Myspace. Facebook pages became a mile long. Supposedly Facebook is going to fix this soon with tabbed browsing, but we have yet to see the finished product.

Sal: I joined Myspace around the time Dan got on Facebook, I think. I just signed up so I could write blogs that my friends could subscribe to because the blog site I used up until that point wouldn’t let people sign up to read them. That’s right, people: I joined Myspace for YOU. It’s all your fault.

The complete opposite side of the spectrum falls Twitter. Twitter takes away your profile page… because, honestly, who cares what your top 50 movies and bands right now are? They give you a picture and a 150 letters to get across what you’re saying. Twitter organizes your posts and your friends’ posts all on one page. Essentially it’s like having your own private message board.

Sal: All I have to say is that Dan sure does love Twitter for someone who claimed they would never sign up for it. He posts way more than I do, but I’ll actually read them because his blog chronicles are too long for my taste and lack the paragraph breaks that my poor little eyes so desperately need. The true point of social networking sites is to find out what people are up to. Twitter lets you do that without all the crap. All you talk about is what you’re doing or thinking about at the moment. It’s simple and doesn’t give stalkers access to insane amounts of your personal information.

My weakness with social networking is that of many people. Our lives revolve around checking all three of the above sites twelve times daily. You never know when someone might be on Facebook chat, or when a band put new songs on their Myspace page or what Joe Smith is up to right now on Twitter.

Sal: I might check Myspace once a month, but I have to admit that I’m constantly on Twitter or Facebook via my BlackBerry, much to Dan’s irritation. Honestly, he’s just jealous that he can’t be connected all the time. Once he gets his hands on an iPhone, we’ll never have to actually talk to each other again. Marriage via social networking, anyone?