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Staying disconnected (or, I'm doing the internet wrong)
Something I've noticed about the internet these days is that everything's supposed to be connected to everything else. Half the blog tools out there have options to cross-post entries to FaceBook etc., and both here and on Twitter it's a built-in feature that your friends list or followers/followees - all the Venn diagrams of your online relationships - are common property for anyone who visits your page. And I couldn't find out the results of the Crazy Writer quiz without giving the application read and write access to my Twitter account, so I'll never get to find out whether I'm William Burroughs or Philip K. Dick. Woe.
It seems like Web 2.0 is driving a sea change in internet manners, a reversal of the compartmentalising mindset I'm more used to online. Instead of using different tools for different purposes, with different identities to control and separate our various social spheres and activities, we're supposed to merge all our internet behaviour into one big fuzzy interconnected mass; moreover, judging by the way this access is implemented (via functionality presented as cool toys or helpful utilities) we're supposed to want that.
I don't get it.
Now, I'm not really Philip K. Dick, so it's not about paranoia. This is obviously happening because enough people do want their online things combined, collated, amalgamated. But that's just not me. I have circles of friends that don't overlap; I have geeky writing stuff that I prefer to attach to a faceless cipher of a username; I have interests I talk about online which my 'real life' friends don't share and would probably find eccentric at best. (Stop looking at me like that! I meant comics!) I like compartments; and if I look at the various unrelated and unrelating groups of people in my real life, the distinct differences in personality and culture that set them apart and make them awkward at weddings, those compartments seem more natural, more representative of real social networks, than the privacy-light, extended happy family my blog options are trying to engineer for me.
Or am I just being old-fashioned?
It seems like Web 2.0 is driving a sea change in internet manners, a reversal of the compartmentalising mindset I'm more used to online. Instead of using different tools for different purposes, with different identities to control and separate our various social spheres and activities, we're supposed to merge all our internet behaviour into one big fuzzy interconnected mass; moreover, judging by the way this access is implemented (via functionality presented as cool toys or helpful utilities) we're supposed to want that.
I don't get it.
Now, I'm not really Philip K. Dick, so it's not about paranoia. This is obviously happening because enough people do want their online things combined, collated, amalgamated. But that's just not me. I have circles of friends that don't overlap; I have geeky writing stuff that I prefer to attach to a faceless cipher of a username; I have interests I talk about online which my 'real life' friends don't share and would probably find eccentric at best. (Stop looking at me like that! I meant comics!) I like compartments; and if I look at the various unrelated and unrelating groups of people in my real life, the distinct differences in personality and culture that set them apart and make them awkward at weddings, those compartments seem more natural, more representative of real social networks, than the privacy-light, extended happy family my blog options are trying to engineer for me.
Or am I just being old-fashioned?
no subject
It probably is some kind of 'darned kids get off my lawn' kind of thing, but it's also a legitimate worry.
More rambling...
Yeah, it just seems like there aren't as many options as there should be to support all types of social (or anti-social) internet structure. I think the bit I'm least crazy about is the 'see who this person follows online' type stuff (cf.Twitter) where you have no control over random, non-logged in people checking out your interests and connections; I feel it should be possible to set the access level for this yourself depending on how transparent you want to be. I'm okay with the friends page here on LJ, because I've pretty much decided this will be my fannish, geeky space which won't link up with my RL stuff; but I still think I should have the ultimate control over who sees that.
That said, it definitely gets easier as you stick your neck further out ;) I started off determined to friend-lock every post here, but now that I've dipped my proverbial toes in the water I really don't know what I was so uptight about.
And p.s. thank you for commenting :) I'm at such an early stage with LJ and I have almost no network to speak of outside of RicStar, with no clue how to extend it, so it's great to get even a wee bit of feedback! I guess it's going to be a slow-growing, organic thing that'll take a few years.