Unsocial Networking — a lament from the invisible blogger

I guess this will be a somewhat whiney post. I’ve been rather down for the past week, and physically I’ve been feeling like crap warmed over since Sunday–I think I’m fighting off another virus. But I’ve been wanting to talk about this stuff for a while now.

For a long time, I’ve been struggling with Morbid Invisibility Syndrome–the feeling that no one is interested in anything I say or do, no one finds my thoughts worth a response, no one even knows I exist, basically. Mostly, I’m used to this, but some times it weighs on me more than others.

After Dad’s Open House in December, I finally had to admit that I was bored shitless with Twitter. I’d been offline for several days cooking party food and hosting, and when I got back and was trying to catch up, I found that I was just sick of the whole thing. But Twitter was simply the epitome of the entire “social networking” gambit. It seems that the more “social networking” everyone does, the more…impersonal it all becomes. People are talking, but I never really feel like they’re talking to anybody. People aren’t communicating by intention or design. There’s no sense that they’re aware of, or addressing, anyone in particular. With Twitter, and Facebook status updates, it’s like eavesdropping by telepathy–random stream-of-consciousness idle remarks, on and on and on. People aren’t thinking about what they say, they’re just popping it out.

You know how you feel when someone near you says something, and you think they’re talking to you, and you say something in response–but it turns out they weren’t talking to you, and they ignore you while someone else answers? You know how that feels kind of awkward, and for a moment at least, you feel both stupid and snubbed? That’s the feeling I get on Twitter and Facebook. I don’t know whether I should comment/reply or not. I do, but usually I’m ignored, and I just feel lucky I’m not actively flamed.

But aside from the utter superficiality of personal tweets/updates, both of these “social networks” have now been overwhelmed by “commercial” posts. On Facebook, it’s a constant stream of apps, games, invitations, memes, and other silliness. If I go to someone’s profile page to look for their status updates, most of the time all I see are apps, graphics, gifts, “became a fan of…” and so on. I can’t even find people’s status reports on their profile page. Twitter has been completely taken over by the marketers and self-promoters–writers, gurus, bloggers, businesses. Most of Twitter consists of a tidal wave of quotes, advice-bytes, notices to read someone’s blog or article, links to websites, reports of how many words someone just wrote, and other promotional stuff. Twitter has become such a commercial vehicle, it plans to institute commercial accounts so businesses and self-promoters can advertise themselves even more efficiently. I finally sorted all my followees into lists and that helped. But I no longer spend time trying to catch up with Twitter every day, and when I do, there’s never very much worth the effort.

I’m sincerely interested in other people’s lives, and I like to read people’s blogs. Five years ago, the first thing I did every day was check my LiveJournal f-list. But very few of the regulars there are still posting much (and that’s aside from the two who have actually died). I guess blogging is too much work, and everyone’s lives have gotten so stressful and complicated. Yes, LJ could get pretty fluffy, with all the “memes” that would go around. But at its worst, LJ was a thousand times more substantial than Facebook at its best.

But I keep on blogging. I’m a story-teller and a communicator. I don’t want to tweet and text and status update and comment. I’m a writer. I want to write. That’s what I do. If I don’t write every single day, I start to go insane. I keep a monstrous personal journal offline. And when I’m not writing, I want to read other people’s writing: not fluffy chit-chat, but real stuff, words that have had some thought and consideration go into them, words that have been crafted for an audience (whether of one or a million and one).

I like to listen to other people, and I’m a good listener. But I’d like to be heard, as well. I just can’t let go of the notion that, if I listen, and comment, and model the way I’d like to be treated, somehow I’ll get that back in return. It never works that way. I write posts…and they don’t get comments. Oh, some of them do, but many of them don’t. I comment on other people’s journals, and the journal owner ignores me. (I can’t tell you how often I’ve commented on someone’s LJ, and the journal owner has responded to every single comment…except mine. I’m the only commenter whose comment doesn’t get a reply. That happens to me over and over and over.)

And you know…that hurts. I know it’s dumb to feel that way, but it does. This past week, I spent three solid days re-doing By Light Unseen Media’s website. I made a post (Twitter and Facebook) about it when it was all finished…and not a single person said a word about it. My posts on Facebook don’t even get “liked,” let alone replied to. One of my authors saw the new site by accident and he loves it. Everyone else…crickets chirping. I posted the video I made in class here on LJ. I spent hours making that. Two people commented on it.

I have a paid LJ account, so now I have stats for my journal. I’ve been surprised to see how many people are looking at my posts (I say “looking at” because that’s all page hits tell me, I don’t know for sure who is actually reading). Evidently I’m not a person who inspires others to respond. Years ago, I used to write huge long newsy e-mail letters to my friends. I finally just stopped sending them. No one ever answered me. I felt that I must just be boring everyone–or offending them. I’ve been cut off by a number of people over the years–just cut off, no explanation, no quarrel, no final statement, they just broke off all contact and disappeared, forever. Radio silence.

In social terms, silence isn’t just silence. Today in an article on “how to handle information overload” on WBZ’s website, communications analyst Josh Holbrook of The Yankee Group was quoted as saying,
“The RSVP isn’t necessary anymore…Silence has come to mean: ‘not interested’ or ‘not attending’.” He’s only wrong in one respect: silence hasn’t “come to mean” that, it’s always meant that. In social situations, if you ignore someone and “give them the silent treatment,” it’s called “a cut.” It once was the most severe expression of disapproval you could make in civilized venues. It means, “fuck off…you don’t exist, you’re dead to me, everything about you is unwelcome.”

Now, it probably isn’t correct to feel that slighted just because I don’t get comments on my blog posts. But that’s the problem with having a personal blog on which you share personal stuff and call it “social networking.” And I also gauge it against two “reality check” yardsticks. First, my invisibility on “social networks” is part of an overall pattern of general invisibility in my life as a whole. (That’s a topic for another post.) Second, I compare the level of response I get to that of most other people, and wonder why I get so much less. Add all that up, and it becomes harder to rationalize that it’s neither deliberate nor personal.

I have a feeling, though, that I’m not the only person who feels this way. It used to be, even if I didn’t enjoy much interaction online, at least I had a lot to read. In the last few months, the substantive personal posts have really dried up. It’s gotten so incredibly quiet online–quiet, that is, when you reduce the meaningless drivel to the white noise that it is. Six months ago, every day was like Sundays used to be…and now every day is like Christmas. I feel like a Borg that’s been disconnected from the hive mind–all the voices are gone. Where is everyone? I’ve got a suspicion that everyone is bored with the Internet. You’re all watching Lost and Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who on cable and then you’re talking to your friends about them on your iPhone or your Blackberry. Or is it the Great Recession? Have that many people really lost their Internet access because of the economy?

See, I have this romantic, rosy little fantasy. I keep thinking how nice it would be to have even one person in my life who would say, every day, “So, how was your day?” and really want to know the answer, right down to the nitty little details, and would really listen, and be interested. And then–and mind you, this is equally important–I’d say to that person, “and how was your day?” and that person would reciprocate, in honest, open, unself-conscious fashion, and I’d listen, and soak it all up like a sponge. Because to me, that is intimacy. And I’m just starved for it.

I wonder if I’m really so unusual in feeling this way. I wonder if the reason some people chatter away on Twitter or Facebook is because they’re living out this fantasy that they really are talking to someone who cares about the minutiae of their daily lives. But I just can’t maintain that delusion without feedback. I want to be talked to (to, not at) and I want to be heard. Neither one alone is enough.

I know nothing is going to change, and I know there’s nothing I can do about it. People’s habits run in grooves, like rainwater, and I don’t think there’s anyone left in the world who craves written exchanges as much as I do. That’s another of my many freakish eccentricities. But I just needed to get it all out and say it.