(Anti-)Social networking

I am a student.

Thus, as a general rule, spending infinite hours “surfing the web”, in opposition to achieving (or even attempting) anything remotely productive, is a priority. Similar to everyone else my age that I have encountered so far in life, with the exception of perhaps two people, I am a dedicated Facebook user, and I expect if you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who I know, I have “stalked” your profile already. It is safe to say that, no matter how many times a month/week/day Facebook is changing its appearance, the daily routine of waking up, reaching for my laptop and logging into “fbook”/”faceyb”/some other ghastly nickname that no doubt I too have employed myself in the past, is proving increasingly fruitless and unsatisfactory. Therefore, when I recently received a “VIP invite” to join Google Plus, a project aiming to make “sharing on the web more like sharing in real life” (pah), I jumped at such an opportunity and created my profile, despite my many other commitments as a student. As a relatively new social networking site (as far as I am aware), only two of my actual, real-life, living and breathing friends possess a profile, so my news feed is somewhat sparse to date. I have been desperately searching out desperate D-list celebrities, hoping for street cred in being the first to become part of such an innovative social networking site, to add to my “circles”. Unfortunately, on realizing how I jumped with such enthusiasm to create yet another social networking profile, and delve even further into a virtual world, surrounded by pictures of people I would never meet, and status updates so carefully composed craving attention and, god forbid, maybe getting a “like”, I found myself thinking perhaps I ought to be reading, socializing with real people, perhaps leaving the house every once in a while. But then my counter argument, less logical and certainly much lazier, rescued me from such a ridiculous thought. Of course one day I will have to pull myself out of this virtual rut, perhaps encounter a living being, be forced to communicate through speech, not Facebook chat, and who knows, maybe I’ll even work out how to use a library that isn’t Google Books.

But until that day comes hurtling into my life with reasonable force, I am quite happy sitting on the sofa, blogging about how I need to stop social networking, with the world, virtual though it may be, at my fingertips.