Brandon Moon

Recently I had a friend decide to deactivate her Facebook account in favor of Twitter. This kinda interested me, as its a fairly unusual thing for people to do (hmmm, that’s a whole other interesting topic right there). I asked her why she had decided to do this, and she told me that a social network is a two way thing. You have to put energy into it in order to get something out of it. She felt like she wasn’t getting that much out of Facebook, and consequently was putting less and less into it. Finally she decided to just give up on it altogether. Twitter, for her, was a more interactive social network.

As I thought about it, it kinda sunk in. A social network is a two way thing. I don’t always feel like this is true with my networks. I feel like I put a lot into sharing things that I find interesting, and few people let me know that they appreciate it. Conversely, I spend a lot of time reading other peoples stuff, but rarely show appreciation, even for the things I really like. This isn’t really socializing, its more like shouting loudly at a group while they’re all shouting back at me. Nobody is really listening, and there’s no real interaction going on.

As ironic as it may seem, one of the best examples I have of actually interacting on social networks is my mother-in-law. Her interaction on Facebook is way more personal. I know that her reason for using Facebook is to keep in touch with her daughters, who are both married and far from home. They swap stories, share pictures and fun links, and generally catch up with each other on Facebook. It’s a subtle but effective way of saying “I love you” without being embarrassing. And since I’m now a member of the family, I get to be included too! I appreciate that she takes the time to click on and check out my weird and ridiculous links, and even comments on several. It makes me feel like my efforts to share on Facebook are validated. And that’s just cool.

And so, ironically, the big problem with social networks is that they often aren’t social enough. I guess it’s no surprise, but as it turns out: socialising takes effort, whether online or offline. Guess its time to go comment on more of my friends posts…

(Click the link above for context)

Have you noticed how in real life, “friendship” is sort of a vague term, but it’s an extremely solid one online? Either you are friends with someone on Facebook, or you are not, right? And somehow this entitles you to knowing all sorts of things about this person, whereas in real life it’s much easier to pick and choose what you share with whom? And then what happens when you don’t care to be that person’s friend anymore? In real life, you simply fall out of contact (and this can happen for any number of reasons; it’s rarely an explicit action), but online you have to explicitly say “I don’t want to be your friend anymore.” Or perhaps you just hide them. But maybe there’s too many to do that to. Or maybe you just don’t like an empty news feed.

At it’s core, that’s what this article is about. It’s comparing fundamental similarities and differences in social interaction, both online and in real life. The similarities are usually pretty obvious and intuitive. In real life, we all have a little bit of vanity or ego. We do count friends, just not with numbers. When we are bored, we call up our friends. There’s always a bit of awkwardness with establishing and avoiding friendships. And everyone likes and dislikes different things about everyone else. It stands to reason that social networks—both offline and offline—essentially accomplish the same thing. It also makes sense that both are susceptible to the same follies.

Because both are so similar, I think we probably tend to focus too much on the differences. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but it does cause us to develop a negative attitude towards social networks. The truth is, those differences probably aren’t so bad. As human beings, we have an express need to communicate, and we always find a way. Maybe it means adapting how we use social networks to communicate, but we still do it. We create our own “social norms” around our social networks that makes them more useable for all. Pretty neat huh?

And for some reason, I find this all so fascinating.

This is exactly what I was describing with this post. Be careful what information you put online, even on Facebook! (or Google+, or Twitter, or…)