Social Networking Progress

[enteirah]

In some ways I can't help but think social networking has gone so far back these days in terms of how people interact with one another. In days gone by, you used to have friendly communities like this on LJ where if there was something which created a lot of food for thought or you had a lot of things on your mind you were unsure of the best way forward, you could post it up here, and you'd often get a healthy raft of responses, debate and advice.

Nowadays, people have to rely on posting castrated-to-140-letter comments to the likes of Twitter which most folks don't even read, or posting stuff on Facebook/Tumblr, where the primary responses seem to be lazy-click 'xyz likes this, xyz shared this'.

We have progressed so well!

Comments

[eliki.livejournal.com]

Frankly I'd have to agree with that entirely. The only reasons I ended up giving in and getting a Facebook page were because I couldn't get a Spotify account otherwise. And I have so many relatives who use it, it seemed (in theory) to be a way of staying in touch with them. Laughably someone else said it was a good way to promote the music projects, but to no surprise that hasn't happened.

But so much of the stuff that appears on there are just snappy little Twitter style posts and comments, or an endless sea of Likes and Shares. There's nothing social about it. The group I'm in on Facebook, for that Talk Talk band, is very lively. Like on LJ in "the good old days" there can be some very in-depth discussions. But then you'd hope so on a group for a band, if the fans are genuine fans. The general FB areas are just so sparse. And I can't help thinking it's carried on through to places like LJ. People mostly don't want to take the time to read anything longer than a few words, or they just post a simple "cool" or somesuch.

If we're going to replace face to face talking with braindead zombies all gazing into their iPhone screens and grunting at the bus drivers, you'd at least expect decent conversation on Farcebook and Twitter. They need a new name for it because "social" networking is going to land someone in trouble with the false description laws one of these days. ;)

[enteirah]

It does certainly seem a very odd state of progress, as even the older tech like text messaging had more interaction involved in it. And I don't believew the whole population has suddenly become so busy in the last 5 years they don't have time to do anything but click buttons now. :S