Nettie: Your Emotional Blog Advisor
Dear Nettie,
In the past two months, I’ve discovered via social network stuff Things I Wish I Didn’t Know about people I’d formally respected. One guy posted some videos on facebook that I thought were lame-ass and offensive. Another guy started posting ‘Hotties’ every monday on his blog, which is entirely unrelated to the content of his blog.
These are both people who could impress you in person (and did, me) but not so much thanks to social web.
Any thoughts on how much is enough versus how much is too much?
And are we as a culture going to have to get used to Too Much Information and carry on the business relationship (I x-nayed both, but don’t have replacements!)
Signed, Argh!
Dear Argh,
well my dear. I know what you mean. In fact, I’ve become totally jaded about it. To prove how idiotic all these videos, slide shows, pictures and whatnot I get on Fun(???)Wall, SuperWall, GrowYourGnome and HappyHappyFriends or whatever all the three gazillion applications on FaceBook are called, I sneeringly went to the next unopened “gift” in my Inbox and. And was riveted by a video sent on by my friend Troy – The Tale Of Two Brains.
Ooops.
Okay, there’s a few good ones among them and I’m sorry if I’ve missed them.
To come back to your first question – how much is too much?
Most of it is too much. If in doubt, leave it out. Even that video I just enjoyed – I don’t think it’s essential to my life. It’s kinda neat, yes, like the 50,875 other things that are kinda neat. Imagine this: if all of those neat things on the internet were furniture, or nah, even just knicknack, you’d have to live in a castle and you’d still have to hire half of Mexico to keep it all dusted. (And, by the way, if I were modest, I’d confess that I collect tons of internet bric-a-brac myself.)
But more particularly, you’re not talking about all the neat info – you’re talking about lame-ass and offensive stuff. You know what, there should be some kind of locker room on FaceBook where people can air their sweaty, smelly jokes and videos all they like without bothering the rest of us.
Do we have to get used to it? Nah. I say if you don’t like those sapless jokes, obnoxious videos and braindead invitations, tell the other person – politely, I guess – that this is not your cup of tea and to please stop sending it. If they don’t stop, throw them out.
Or you can just ignore all of it, like you would someone sitting beside you at a business dinner passing gas.
Nettie
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