TMI: Society's Curse of Too Much Information
Through the act of creeping, it's
very easy to get to know people through Facebook, blogs, Twitter, etc... However, how true to reality is the
information filed under "Five Things I Couldn't Live Without"? I find social media and the internet a little
off putting in regard to socializing.
This isn't due to the content. This isn't due to my hate of internet shorthand
and text inundated with grammatical errors. But rather I hate how easily
information about someone is available.
It kills the mystery of the individual.
Why get to know someone when all their thoughts, emotions, work history,
and life is posted online on a web page?
As curious as that internet version of someone is, I'd much rather hear
all that from you.
Through cyber stalking
socializing, almost everyone with internet can find out anyone's favorite sushi
joint, turn offs, and what they were doing in 1982. It turns me on to know that there are some
folks that don't use Facebook, Twitter, or much anything social networky. These individuals preserve the enigma of who
they are, and can control who and what knows anything about them and their
thoughts.
Frankly, I wonder how the people
who fall into celebrity cope. With
enough Googling, I'm sure we could find out James Franco's favorite flavor of
ice cream. With everything to know about
this echelon of people available with a few strokes of the keyboard, what happens
to the mystery of this lucky slice of the population?
Socially speaking, shouldn't an
individual be able to cling to the mystery of himself as any other human being
does? It blows that that facet of
humanity is denied privacy by having every career move and sneeze
documented. Certainly, this awesome for
fans. It's different in the case of
politicians, as they need to be scrutinized and made transparent. However, those who fall into the light
because of their talent to entertain a population...let them hold their
personhood close and reveal as much or as little as they want.
When everyone and anyone can know
everything about you, what do you have left to share? Perhaps you find yourself in awkward
situations where the people you meet remember and know more about you than even
you do.
You line up a particularly awesome
anecdote to share with someone you're trying to get to know, and it
anticlimactically is cut short with "Oh, I read that story already
somewhere." So much for sharing a
piece of yourself when the internet has enabled another to do so already. Although this has never happened to me
personally because (let's be real) I'm very much a nobody, this situation falls
within the realm of possibility for many others.
I want to get to know you. Not the perfectly aligned, triple spell
checked Facebook statuses that still manage to have errors. Fuck that.
Tell me the unedited, on the fly
with good eye contact stories about yourself.
Gesticulate, inflect, waggle your eyebrows. Let's unravel the mystery of who you are, who
I am, and who the fuck anyone is in person. It's better than spending hours scouring
Facebook, Wikipedia, or IMDB to get to know someone.
Tell me the story of you by
you.
Give it to me raw.
It really is crazy how much information about celebrities is out there and how much we as people want to consume it. I think I don't follow celebrity information too much, but I still clicked on a video whose title was something along the lines of "Jerry Seinfeld's wife bought an entire box of cronuts!"
ReplyDeleteI do think that there is still some hope for the rest of non-celebrity people though because even though there is way more information out there about us, I feel like that's all stuff that still doesn't really matter in interpersonal interactions. Isn't our attraction (friendship-wise or sexual-wise or other-wise) really based on how that person reacts in the moment and interacts with the present? You know how crucial timing is for comedy and storytelling; even a story you've heard a million times before can be awesome at the right time.
.
And all the context that's floating around the posts but not necessarily included in them? That seems to be where the story really is. Like why that sushi joint is their favorite or why they were even in the neighborhood to discover that place? Or what childhood experience made Moose Tracks into James Franco's favorite flavor of ice cream? (I didn't really look it up). Maybe all that information you find on the internet is nothing more than the page number or chapter heading for someone's story, in that they give you an indication of where you are, but never the (raw) meat of the story. Maybe I'm being too idealistic though. And getting carried away and writing so much.