Twitter and Narcissim

Or, Do People Really Care If I Am Eating a Taco?

Are social networks thinly veiled venues for narcissism?

Apart from what I understand to be the very beneficial business and networking aspects, Facebook and Twitter are teeming with folks detailing the comings and goings of their daily lives to a degree that older generations would have found ridiculous ten years ago.

To me, it begs the question: do we really want people to be that intimately connected with our minute-to-minute living?  Not to mention that once published to the vast black whole that is the internet,  our words are no longer ours, and any person, from your great aunt Ida to the county narcotics division, can access them.

Bad idea, bro.

Are we comfortable with that?

For me, things like Facebook--and by extension, mobile phones and e-mail--are double-edged swords.  At once, they bridge the gab between physical and emotional space that allow us the essential need to connect with others while shoving us into a sort of communal existence in which Waldon Pond would be overrun with reporters and fans before Emerson could say "Transcendentalism."

I like when six people "like" my Facebook status, I'm not gonna lie.  It's nice to know that people care enough about me to care what I'm doing.  But I also wonder, what kind of connections am I taking away from them by bombarding them with links of which they may or may not have any interest?  How would I be interacting differently with the world around me if I weren't stalking the photos of my cousin's boyfriend's sister's cat?  Who wants to read Moby Dick when they can see what Johnny-Jo was doing in June of 2006?

Oh, and running a blog?  What's up with that?

(And since we're on the topic, for funsies.  'Cause I!  Am!  A Nerd!)