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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Social Networks

Could it be that social networks are a feeble attempt to fight against loneliness? I have the feeling that in modern times people are getting more and more isolated so they attempt to overcome loneliness by engaging in online social interaction. But internet users tend to relate only to their circle of friend, in a more impersonal way and they rarely create strong bonds through this virtual networks.

Communities themselves are built by common, shared myths, which are just symbolic and meaningful stories. And good stories require tactile human experience, things we can all relate to physically--hard falls, soggy shoes, dry mouths and tired arms. We'll receive no Moby Dicks from Second Life, and in the six years since the popular advent of blogs, how many good books have been made from collections of blog posts?

No Relations
One of the problems with some social networks like Twitter is that the messages are to brief; they give no opportunity for creating relationships. It's like trying to know someone through what they scrawl in a restroom stall.

Another issue you can find while using social networks is that members do not spend as much time at networking or exchanging information, as they do in “broadcasting their lives to an outer tier of acquaintances.

Once again, “social networks” does not mean “friends networks” or “party networks” it means “society networks”. We connect to people who are interested in observing, reading about, being linked to, finding out stuff but not necessarily relating to others. If social networks really are the next generation of news, it implies that we are more interested in reading Facebook posts than we are in reading newspapers.

4 comments:

Fer Fassi said...

Yes I agree with your comments. I also believe that this kind of networks allows people to be in touch but furthermore to get the choice of being just an outside audience without having to interact if they don't want to. It is like a big brother with your social circle.

Beso.. me gusto el blog ;)

Mariana Soffer said...

Yeah, great coment, I loved the big brother analogy. Other thing i did not put there is that I do not blame it to technology, I think humans are having more and more problems to relate to each other.

Take care

Uncle Tree said...

Hello, Mariana!

I still read the newspaper because of it's portability. No laptops for me. Windy days do make it tough, though.

I am just now having my own blog
for the first time. For almost three years I hung out at IntentBlog, which
has since closed up shop. Making
friends globally was thrilling for me. Talking to strangers was fun.

Now, I see that where as before we were all commentators and repliers,
today we all have our own sites,
and call ourselves authors. Looking
around through a variety of tags and categories, I have seen that very few, or no comments at all, is the norm. How discouraging!

I started commenting on other people's blogs (keeping the Golden Rule in mind), and now that is beginning to pay off. Not only views, but comments, too, are finally showing themselves. It
is time-consuming, for sure, and I'll have to find some kind of balance in order to continue creating new material fairly often.

I'm not actually trying to sell anything, nor am I out there looking to buy. I wish I could say,
"I'm agenda-free", but that's not really the case, either.

The notorious are rarely lonely.
I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Maybe that's why attempt to avoid it.

Talk about a tangent. Bye now! UT

Mariana Soffer said...

Lovely post, I really like it, seems like really honest. I just try to write cause I want to write a couple of books, so I guess I need to practice, besides to me is fun to transmit information and say what I think about it. I was wondering why you do not have anything in your blog? And I love to talk about growing up and what to do then, so feel free to write to my email, or maybe I will write a post about growing and we'll coment there.
Take care