#internetsocialization

1.  You find a site that looks promising and interesting, something maybe right down your alley.  You go through the sign up form carefully filling in all the blanks. You pick out a profile photo.  You run a typing marathon figuring out answers to questions like..."What's the basic premise of your spirituality?"...or "Tell us in detail All About You!"...or "Fill in the details of this very important box, or you won't get your foot through the frickin' door."...etc.  You get all primed and ready to set up your own page after spending 20 minutes to a half hour filling things out (not too mention maybe an hour of time it took just to find this particular site, or the extra half hour that went into dealing with technical glitches), and then, once you click the "Join" button, a page pops up that says something to the effect, "Sorry chump, you have to be approved before you can join this site, so sit back and get comfortable, this may take a while, or you might never hear from us again."

2.  There's a big warning sign posted on the home page:  You must participate if you want to be a member of this site.  Anyone who doesn't add something during a specific time span (every two weeks, or every week, or once a month, or once every five days, etc. etc.) will be deleted.

Okay, okay, okay.  If people don't add content and interact, it won't be a social site.  I get that.  But this is not realistic for me, my work-weary brain says.  Are they frickin' kidding me??  I just want to read blogs, or I want to post some of my stuff (very) occasionally, or I want to see what other people are into, or what someone else thinks about this or that.  And I love it when they actually have a box on the fill-out form where you have to "click HERE as a promise you will post on a regular basis". 

This seems like too much commitment and too much work to me.  I'm sorry, but the microscopic particle of internet space you have created is not the center of my universe.  I don't promise anything, not even to people in real life, in the real world.  Get real.

3.  Social Sites, just like the real world, are full of Creepers.  Sad but true, but on the internet social site, Creepers can hide the fact that they're creepers for a longer period of time than they might be able to in the real world.  And Creepers hate being called out when you spot them and aim a finger at them and call 'em as you see 'em.  "What, what are you talking about?" they stutter. 

4.  You join a site, decide for whatever reason that you don't like it, or it's just not for you, and then discover that deleting your page and information is not an option, or is such a twisted garbled (maybe deliberately confusing) process, that your page is left tacked to a weary crappy site like an old sticky note on the bathroom mirror.

5.  Everyone ignores you, or they communicate only by leaving images in your comment box.  Um, this is a Social Site.  We're suppose to T-A-L-K to each other.  And for me, this does not mean that you leave an occasional meme in the comment box.  I think people resort to leaving images just so they don't have to actually COMMUNICATE with each other.  I would rather see a single sentence, even something like, "My cat died today, and I got a parking ticket.  It was a rough day.", rather than one of a gazillion generic images found on the internet.  At least this single sentence TELLS me something about this person!

I don't leave comments.  It is a huge waste of time.  If I have something to actually SAY to you, I'll do that, but life is too short to spend it leaving multiple images on multiple pages of multiple strangers.