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Considering how much of my life revolves around technology, it comes as a surprise to a lot of people how uninvolved I have been in social networks. I did create a MySpace account in 2003, but quickly deleted it after I realized how crappy it was. Apart from that, my involvement in the "Web 2.0" world has been limited to irregular postings on Flickr and the occasional snide comment on Digg. In all, I have endured almost four years of answering the shocked question "You're not on Facebook?!" Well, this past month I finally joined up with the masses and created accounts on both Facebook and Twitter. This change of heart was primarily motivated by recent efforts at work to understand and better utilize social media. Non-profits tend to be a little behind the game where marketing efforts are concerned, and we're beginning to recognize that spreading our message and finding supporters via social mediums like Facebook and Digg will ultimately be more successful than continuing to insist that they come to us. And so far the learning process has been a good one; I've gotten reconnected with college friends I haven't spoken with in years, I've met some new people in the area, and I've had the chance to read some posts and insights from people whose views haven't come up in our previously-casual conversations. My jump into social networking hasn't been without its hiccups, though. I, apparently, don't have the capacity to read an ignorant or inflammatory comment without absolutely FREAKING OUT. And, in case you didn't already know, the Internet absolutely rife with ignorance and tactlessness. And it's all concentrated on Facebook status messages: So-and-so "doesn't want Obama to win because the terrorists want Obama to win." So-and-so "can't imagine this country electing a socialist." So-and-so "is sick of listening to gibberish. LEARN TO SPEAK ENGLISH IF YOU'RE GOING TO LIVE AND WORK IN AMERICA, OKAY?"
Unfortunately, the growing frustration of this realization finally came to a head last week, and in one of the worst possible venues. I was reading some blogs that January follows over her shoulder, when an article written by a friend of her's jumped out at me. The conclusion of the article stated that anyone who feels that abortion is an important issue has no business voting for Barack Obama in the upcoming election because (and this is what got me) "he's not just pro-choice, he's PRO-ABORTION!" It was at this point that I decided to unleash a snarky, passive-aggressive (and then later, aggressive-aggressive) tirade in her comment's section about her carelessness and ignorance. At the time I thought I was being very cordial and level-headed but, as January later pointed out, no paragraph that contains the word "frankly" more than once can honestly be read as anything but confrontational. This happened not just that one time, but numerous times over the course of the day. Our conversation finally reached its dénouement with me calling her irrational and basically ignorant. So, long story short, I'm grounded. The Internet is full of people that I'm not going to agree with and am never going to be able to convince of my point of view, and I'm kind of late to the game learning this lesson. I've decided that every time I read a status update or comment that riles me up, I'm just going to assume they're being cleverly ironic. Frankly, that's the only way I'm going to be able to make it through to election day.
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