Friday, May 27, 2011

It's a megaplex of grindhouse!

In today’s tech savvy population there is a demand for overexposure from everyone, not just movie stars and singers. You’re expected to tweet, update and shout your status or whereabouts’ at all times and if you don’t, people will either think you are mad at them or think something terrible has happened. If you don’t have an account on Facebook, Twitter, Classmates.com, Flickr, Myspace, Yelp or one of the other thousand’s of social networking sites, you are nonexistent. When did the world change to an information hungry population? 9 times out of 10, it’s not even good information. I really don’t care that my second cousin twice removed just had “THE BEST BURGER EVA!” and I certainly don’t care whether Kim Kardashian has had a butt implant or not. I’m weary at the sheer amount of information that we are expected to take in and dish out every day. I want to be un-wired.
This brings us to the latest Allie/Oscar adventure.
Oscar and I have been slowly un-plugging, un-wiring and generally disappearing for the last few weeks to remind ourselves what life use to be like. It started with the cancellation of my classmates.com subscription. I didn’t even like 99% of the kids I went to school with, why was I bothering to keep up with what they are doing almost 16 years later? Next came cancelling my Twitter account. I never really got the hang of “tweeting” anyway. I decided to keep my blogger account, mainly because Oscar and I love doing things and writing about them!
The daddy of them all was Facebook. Or Dramabook as my husband call’s it. I had 100’s of friends, everyone from a neighbour I had when I was 5, to old classmates, to customer’s of our automotive repair shop, to people I didn’t know. I would willy nilly accept every “friend request” I was sent. The adrenaline that pumps when that little icon glows “friend request” was intoxicating. Who wanted to be my friend??
I was being pulled into a dimension where my Facebook “friends” ruled everything. If I wasn’t quite sure about wearing those gladiator sandals, ask Facebook. If I needed to find a plumber, ask Facebook. New song that I liked and wanted to share? Post it on Facebook. I would check people’s status first thing in the morning and end my day with an update. It all got to be too much. Everyone with a computer was posting every thought, action and word. The brain to finger filter had been removed and it became acceptable for any acquaintance to spew their typing vomit all over your latest comment. Eventually I started deleting “friends” and THAT caused a backlash the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Tom Cruise jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch. I wasn’t allowed to delete a “friend” and if I pressed “ignore” that person could still see what I was writing, but I could go into settings and permanently ignore them.....it was ridiculous.
Thanks to Oscar I was able to delete my original Facebook account and start a new one. Oscar D Ostomy was formed and I was able to pick and choose my friends from an older and wiser perspective. Many in the ostomy community have figured out that “Allie Korpesio” is in fact “Oscar D Ostomy” and I have been sent friend requests accordingly. I have accepted every single one, why? Because there is no drama in the ostomy community. What you see is what you get; or rather what you DON’T see is what you get.
Thank you Oscar. You have made my life and my world a stage that I once again enjoy performing in and have kept drama where it belongs. In a theatre.

3 comments:

  1. Allie, I'm *so* glad you decide not to bail out of blogging. Your blog is one of the highlights of my online experience.

    And I'm deeply honoured that you accepted my Friend Request.

    Will try to remain a drama-free zone.

    P.S. You *do* know that you can create Friend Lists, and then easily limit who sees what you post by choosing which list(s) do or don't see a given status update or whatever? I use this feature frequently--for instance, I may post something that can be seen only by people I've placed in my Personal list. Anyone I don't know well enough to reveal, say, that I'm struggling through an ostomy blockage, isn't on that list.

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  2. This was just the hot topic of conversation last night with friends: FB deletions and unfriending. It seems like such a slippery slope. Thanks for writing about this, even though I'm still in a quandary.

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  3. You've always been a trailblazer with the courage to do what you believe in. Bravo for getting the FB fiasco under control. Wish more people would do the same.

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