Misanthrophy Moment: Social Skill issues on the internet that bug me

1. People who constantly change which social networks they use/whether they are blogging and where and constantly feel the need to talk about it.

I first noticed this behavior back in the Usenet days when any site that promoted vigorous discussion had people who would grandly announce they were leaving, then quietly return within hours or days, a behavior that is fine once or twice. I recall Usenet folks who did it every month or so, though.

The current version is people who "cut back on their internet usage" every other month by announcing that they are going to stop being on facebook, stop tweeting, stop blogging, etc, and then go back to everything within a week or so.

It's not so much the leaving that bugs me; it is the announcing. Are you really so important that I need a lengthy facebook message from you every time you quit facebook? Are your blog readers really so dumb that if you don't update for awhile they won't figure out that you're cutting back?*

2. People who don't Twitter and are so damn proud of it.

Intense Elizabeth said that she couldn't judge these people because she doesn't have a TV and likes to bring it up. She's right, that's exactly the dynamic at work. Has someone asked if you're on Twitter? Feel free to say "No", though a speech about how you are too busy and important to waste your time on something like that is superfluous.

Otherwise, nobody really needs to know that you consider yourself too busy to be on Twitter. I'm not saying you have to be on Twitter, mind you, I'm saying that the "Why, I can't imagine how people find the time to type 140 characters about what they think or how they are doing every few days." is profoundly irritating thing to say, especially if you bring it up frequently around people who ARE on twitter becase it totally comes off with that "My time is too valuable for me to have a TV" snottiness that some people have. (And IntenseElizabeth mostly doesn't have)

Similar speeches about facebook and blogging are also included here, though Twitter seems to inspire the most self-satisfied smirking from those who don't participate.

3. People who read blog posts and news stories about Oprah, but aren't Oprah fans and need to make sure you know.

This applies to every Entertainment news story, especially those about celebrities, it's just very obvious about Oprah stories right now. American Idol stories get it every single year.

Damn near every Oprah story out there right now that allows comments has dozens of people who apparently clicked on a story about Oprah, chose to comment on a story about Oprah, then wrote something along the lines of "I don't watch Oprah, I don't care about this story."

I wish the people who feel the need to do this could bottle their apparently abundant free time and sell it to those people too busy to twitter.

CC
who appreciaties Oprah like she appreciates William Forsythe as both are apparent geniuses at forms of entertainment that just really don't interest CC personally. My feelings are roughly "Wow, it's great that there's someone out there doing such a great job doing that sort of thing for people who like that."

Because she knows you were dying to know what she thought about the matter.



*This is not a slam against Peacebang, who has closed her blog for a few months and is qite clearly remaining gone those few months. Even I publically pondered closing the Chaliceblog once. Once. in five years of blogging. And I said at the time that I was only going to do this if I got a certain job that more or less required me to. I didn't, so I'm still here. I get that life happens and that if you are literally disappearing for months on end you need to tell people, it's the people who do this all the time and never actually leave who bother me.