Jezebel 
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New York, 7:17 AM
Wed Nov 25
57 posts in the last 24 hours
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08/03/09
I'd imagine this goes for other sites/applications as well
08/03/09
Most of us had never met in person before this point but we've attended the same sites for so long that when we first saw each other it was as meeting old friends after many years. I mean, we're all fuckin' geeks, obviously, so we're relatively awkward in general, but I don't think the fact that the vast majority of our relationships take place online diminishes them.
However there is, I think, a certain threshold that can be passed only through meeting and internet friend in person - An internet friend can move and lose a connection or have a change in life priorities or just time allowed on the net, and your relationship to that person can change dramatically. It can end pretty abruptly in some cases. I think physical proximity really is a very significant factor in the vitality of relationships. But it's not the only one.
08/03/09
08/02/09
I also eat raw fish and my one true love is a magical ring. Hisss! My preciousssss...
08/02/09
I also agree with your point, Hortense, that the internet has helped me learn to read people better, not worse. Part of my life is "a clinicial impairment in social skills" (Asperger's syndrome) and I am much more fluent, fluid, and expressive in text than I am in person. Having the ability to talk with friends after outings in my preferred medium--a text-based one--and go over what sucked and what went well has made everyone's lives better in my circle.
I have made a number of valuable relationships online, including my girlfriend (whom I've known for almost 10 years online, now, and met in person in 2006 after we'd been dating long-distance for 2 years). I've also made a few bad moves, with people who were drama queens and sucked up energy and time uselessly. You learn to avoid them, just like in "real" life.
I find this periodic "O noes teh intarwebs is ruinin teh childrenz!" tedious and the regular defenses those of us who genuinely enjoy our time on the internet must put forward even more tedious.
08/02/09
To some extent I see the Archbishop's point, though. I'm in my mid-20s and didn't grow up with online bullying the way some people a decade younger have, and I rely heavily on social networking sites to keep in touch with friends on multiple continents. But I've been known to use facebook to monitor obsessively the movements of friends--to look at photo albums of events I wasn't invited to, see who's writing on other walls and not on mine. It's stupid and self-flagellating, but online social networking makes it much easier and more tempting.
In high school all I could do was wonder who was talking to someone else behind my back over the phone in the evenings. I can't imagine having those horrible teenage over-emotional fears and seeing them realised online. I happen to think the online world is more of a relfection of the real one than many worried 'adult' types say (after all, I may have 500 facebook friends I barely know, but I don't communicate with them regularly the way I do with my close friends), but I think it can refract and magnify real-world problems as well.
08/02/09
The good is that social networking lets me get in touch with friends who live halfway across the country, and so I would otherwise never see. In addition, it gives me a way to connect professionally with other writers that I wouldn't have otherwise had.
The bad side is that I've found that sustained interaction and conversation, like on the phone or through email or face to face, have all but evaporated.
So it's like, as the quantity and accessibility of communication increased, the quality of that communication decreased.
I think it's fine as long as it's incorporated into previously existing ways of socializing. It only becomes an issue when it replaces all of it. Which I have seen happen, and it is sad.
06/06/09
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06/06/09
06/06/09
I started that one in sophomore/junior year of high school. What a time warp, reading that stuff. Just like it is reading my old paper journal I kept from 11.
Also, I just went searching for my old AOL Hometown page - gone into the ether, apparently. I'm not sad. All it consisted of was little glittery heart graphics and the names of my friends with 143*233 after.
06/06/09
06/06/09
If you don't get much traffic and don't have much readership, there are basically zero consequences to abandoning a blog. It's not like it's a physical structure that occupies space. And that's why people do it. You can start something and decide it's not worth your while, and then leave it with no negative repercussions.
Reporting fail, Times.
06/06/09
06/06/09
If no one is looking at those blogs, then the data centers don't have to use the electricity to access them on disk--and the webservers don't have to use resources to serve up the blog's markup/backend code.
As a tiny and limited example: Think of the stuff you have on your computer. You might not look at all of it - there may be songs, pictures, etc that you haven't accessed in months and months. It might occupy a little bit of your hard drive, but your computer isn't really slowed down by them. Your electric bill doesn't go up because of the stuff you have on your hard drive.
I imagine that sites like Blogger and Myspace and Facebook and Livejournal have IMMENSE capacity in their datacenters, and they're probably each sitting on top of a HUGE dedicated pipe to the Internet. Which is why I imagine that an abandoned blog--even thousands and thousands of them--is a negligible burden, in terms of sheer resources.
06/06/09
Perhaps this means I need more clever names, but seriously?
06/06/09
06/06/09
"Today I drove my kids to school. Then I went to Starbucks. Then I took a xanax. Just like the day before! And the day before!"
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