Ssh! Secrets Contained Within

SOCIAL MEDIA AND ME
a product review
a self-directed, psychoanalytical case study

Preclusions=

Facebook: waste of time?
Twitter: the latest trend
iPhone: elitest
Human beings: easily persuaded
Me: above consumerism

Facebook= a social networking site, where old friends come together and declare a long-lost friendship; where old acquaintances pretend they were once friends; where new friends come together and publicize that they have just met and perhaps will develop a friendship (Amendment: an accepted practice of information seeking, otherwise known as Facebook stalking or formerly known as nosy people); where actual friends continue their day to day conversations digitally as well as live; where...

Twitter= my news network. I polled my friends on Facebook (meaning=remember that it's old friends, acquaintances, strangers, and friends) for the purpose of Twitter. =News. Was the answer. I tried it, and now am a more informed human being. I now read many of the New Yorker's political cartoons, smile at Justin Bieber's genius social media tactics as he reels his teenyboppers in (clarification: I love JB's music; I follow him as an experiment), get the latest and greatest about Hurricane Irene and the turmoil in Egypt, and get the same information about Emma Watson's shopping spree from the IMDB updates as I would were I to spend $$$ on People Magazine. Results? I'm more informed about laughter, current events, and items of supreme social importance.

iPhone= a pleasantly lost battle. I was resistant to the phenomenon of smartphones for about a year after I came home from Argentina. I thought they were evidence of a consumer driven, instantly gratified society. As I would go about my daily life, friends would say things like "let's google it" or "googlearlo" or "GPS!" or "Facebook! (meaning update something funny said or immediately upload pictures). These comments of convenience slowly crumbled my resolve and when I graduated, my kind grandmother outsmarted my reluctance and I now am attached at the hand with my phone, which I now proclaim my love. I love the constant emails, news access, gps, words with friends (scrabble), and camera!! Resistance=futile.

Conclusions=

Facebook: awesome
Twitter: potentially awesome
iPhone: irreplaceable
Human beings: easily persuaded
Me: a human being

You: you tell me.

P.S. Thank you arkarthick (twitter user) for suggesting to spice up my blogging with a product review.

Outcome= possible failure, but fun to write.