Self-Branding

I read the Essay in this weeks (Well, October 15th's) Time. It's written by Joel Stein and titled "You Are Not My Friend" Subtitled: "Yes, we're on Facebook. But I don't care about your cat. And stop poking me."

I don't normally read Time. We were awarded a free subscription when I ordered the totes I gave my bridesmaids and - like a Cosmo subscription awarded at the same time - it Won't Go Away. If there's a good cover story, or I'm really bored, I'll flip through it. It was the title of this Essay that got me, as I have recently ceased the majority of my activity on Myspace. (see first blogpot blog for full story)

He makes a good point - saying that people who would have originally been just friends of friends would suddenly, upon "adding him" become great friends pushing pictures of their new living room set and their cat's fifth birthday party on him.

He also notes that these sites aren't really an invasion of privacy (as older generations fear that they are) because we're not posting or sharing anything we don't want the world to know about. He says:

"We're showing you our best posed, retouched photos. We're listing Pynchon books we want you to think we've read all the way through. We're allowing other people to write whatever they want about us on our walls, unless we don't like it, in which case we'll just erase it. If we had that much privacy in real life, the bathrooms at that Minnesota airport would be empty."

All of this is true. Look through the myspace pictures and the blogs. Everyone is happy, everyone is in love...except those people who have to have something wrong with them to get attention. You know those people - they're always injured, poor, sad, achy, tired, grumpy, just-been-fucked-over...or they're the people who have to be More Than everyone else: happier, sadder, in more pain, cooler, have better names to drop: you know them. They're the Competition Whores.

So I'm not going to do any of that. I'm going to make a conscious effort to not shield any of my self. I'll write what comes into my head. Stream of consciousness. And if you don't like what you read...nobody's forcing you. I'm pretending that you don't, anyway. We're more honest when we're by ourselves. That's when we crank up Barbie Girl and sing into our hair brushes.

For reals.

So now I'm going to stop blogging and go to iphoto and adjust the photos I took at Bubble's 9th birthday party last night. I might do a bit of imovie, too...but I'm a little intimidated.

Oh yeah - that's the other thing I'm going to do. With the exception of my husband (and my cats ;-) ), if I talk about someone I will use a nickname. If you're In The Know then a) you probably are aware of the situation in the first place and b) can figure it out on your own. If not...sorry.

Ciao!