I have this thing about being friends with people. In the current popular perspective on more friends, extroversion, and get-along-with-everyone-because-they're-special! mentality being best, I totally suck at being friendly. I'd rather stick a fork in my eye than have to deal with smalltalk, big parties with lots of unknown people, and generally overdone, theatrical (and false) female friendliness.
I like having friends, but only when I actually get along with them. I like to make the distinction between "friend" and "acquaintance." There's people I've met, perhaps multiple times, but they are impossibly boring, shallow, or generally incompatible with me, and though I know who they are, I do not pursue any kind of friendship, as I tend to not like to waste my time. Those are "acquaintances," and I tend to try to avoid them as much as possible. My boyfriend tends to have no idea what I am talking about when I say this, asking "Doesn't every human interaction give you something in return and therefore not waste your time?" Perhaps given the fact that social situations scare the life out of me and require hours of pep-talking myself to be ready, I really need to evaluate the cost-benefit ratio before spending my time with someone. Only people who show a promising "return on investment" get upgraded to "friend" status. This happens very infrequently, as I have very demanding standards.
When it comes to making new friends, I do tend to have a 6th sense that will automatically direct me to be friendly with people that I do in fact get along well with, though logically it makes no sense for me to socialize with those people. Times when I have "forced" myself to be friendly with people because it made "sense" and not because I "felt" it have usually crashed and burned. The friendships that made no "sense" yet were guided by my intuitive friend-sensing equipment have usually gone well.
The thing that I find most fascinating about this is that I don't talk with 50 people at a party and then go "Hey, So-And-So was nice, let's look into getting to know them more," I zero in on So-and-So fairly quickly within moments of entering a room, and though I will talk to the other people, So-And-So is 99% of the time the person I do match best with. It seems that I can "tell" a person's compatibility with me, as a friend, from across the room, nearly instantaneously.
I often think this tracking ability developed as a reaction to my anxiety due to social situations, to save my time and give me the best effort-to-reward result. But the method by which I can scan a room of people and know who is most like me is a mystery to me.
Is this just me, or is everyone like this?
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
It's All About Me
With the advent of sites like MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, and the general "openness" of the Internet as evidenced by Web 2.0, there seems to be an increase in the midset of "it's all about me, and I'm worth telling you about."
A few minutes of mindless poking through Facebook pages for friends of friends of friends, will undoubtably yield links to personalized wedding websites, band sites, all-about-my-dog-Fluffy sites, and enough combinations and permutations to make the mind reel. And really, all these sites only ever prompt one question in my mind: Who cares?
(Do note: I see the irony of posting a question like this on a personal blog. But I hope that one can excuse my apparent hypocrisy in light of the fact that I find the benefit of this blog of mine to be in its writing, of airing out my thoughts and letting off some steam, rather than actually hoping people will read this and give a damn. But I digress.)
Every one of these sites with its brightly colored pixels beams like a search light into the night, pulsing out its morse code message of "READ ME. CARE ABOUT ME. THIS IS IMPORTANT."
This picture of you, sloppy drunk, smiling like a baboon with your arm around some "friend" you've never seen before and will never see again. This terrible poem you wrote, every word pouring out of you as if you were channelling some Great Unknown Force. Year old posts you and your boyfriend wrote back and forth to each other full of sappy and passionate love that would eventually fizzle out when you found your boyfriend making out with your best friend. Or was it you who was making out with the boyfriend's best friend? Undoubtably, there's picture proof of that somewhere too. Or, on the off-chance that the relationship didn't die out, there's this website telling your engagement story in excruciating detail, as if this was a memoir of a movie star who had been proposed to on the beaches of Waikiki by the heir-to-billions investment banker. Which it's not, you, the heir-to-two-gerbils-and-a-tomcat proposed to your future wife in an IHOP by burying the ring between layers of her Strawberry-Shortcake French Toast.
I guess people write these stories, post these pictures, and use up gigabytes because they think they are fascinating. That they matter. That by virtually posting a story about their life, they make it that much more important. The power of published association. "Hey! Paris Hilton published a book and talks about her troubled teenage years! I wrote about that on my Facebook page too! I'm just like Paris Hilton!"
With Web 2.0 bring the allure and promise (no matter how small) of famousness and purpose to Average Joe, people seem to have lost sight of the fact that 99% of people's lives are painfully, dreadfully boring. No, I don't think the fact that your daughter just learned to use the potty is worth "Liking." I don't want to comment on this picture of you standing on top of Smokey Hill Crest. If you were standing on top of Mount Everest, now that would be something worth talking about. But as it is, the hike took you half and hour and didn't even warrant bringing a water bottle, so why on earth did you feel compelled to bring your camera? Take a picture of yourself tossing up a peace sign? And then put it up on the great World Wide Web?
Reading people's mundane lives colored in the neon shades that used to be reserved for really important stuff makes me sad. It makes me sad that the highlight of your wedding, which you compare to "The gold-threaded linen of royalty," is going to be the BeDazzled napkins. That you aren't going to make it to the top of Mount Everest, won't even make it to the right continent to do that, that you might never leave the state. That seeing a touring show of "Disney on Ice" is the closest you will ever get to a real vacation within a 50 mile radius of DisneyWorld.
Life can kind of suck. And I guess I wouldn't mind so much if people didn't make it seem like their mundane existence was somehow more than it is. Not that I want people to wander around in a depressed funk, but making the absolutely boring seem exciting makes the truly exciting less so. If I get famous, I want it to be legitimate. I want to do something awesome. I don't want to fool myself into thinking that that's true when it's not by making my trip to the grocery store seem like some impossible trek. Are people no longer happy living their lives as what they are? Lots of people dream of being a movie star, but realize it's not going to happen. Has Web 2.0 simply allowed us to hold on to this dream without letting go and coming to terms with our comparatively small existence? Can we no longer grow up? Do we honestly believe that we truly can be famous? That everyone has some talent worth global celebration?
Welcome to the future, where everyone is a star, and not for any good reason.
A few minutes of mindless poking through Facebook pages for friends of friends of friends, will undoubtably yield links to personalized wedding websites, band sites, all-about-my-dog-Fluffy sites, and enough combinations and permutations to make the mind reel. And really, all these sites only ever prompt one question in my mind: Who cares?
(Do note: I see the irony of posting a question like this on a personal blog. But I hope that one can excuse my apparent hypocrisy in light of the fact that I find the benefit of this blog of mine to be in its writing, of airing out my thoughts and letting off some steam, rather than actually hoping people will read this and give a damn. But I digress.)
Every one of these sites with its brightly colored pixels beams like a search light into the night, pulsing out its morse code message of "READ ME. CARE ABOUT ME. THIS IS IMPORTANT."
This picture of you, sloppy drunk, smiling like a baboon with your arm around some "friend" you've never seen before and will never see again. This terrible poem you wrote, every word pouring out of you as if you were channelling some Great Unknown Force. Year old posts you and your boyfriend wrote back and forth to each other full of sappy and passionate love that would eventually fizzle out when you found your boyfriend making out with your best friend. Or was it you who was making out with the boyfriend's best friend? Undoubtably, there's picture proof of that somewhere too. Or, on the off-chance that the relationship didn't die out, there's this website telling your engagement story in excruciating detail, as if this was a memoir of a movie star who had been proposed to on the beaches of Waikiki by the heir-to-billions investment banker. Which it's not, you, the heir-to-two-gerbils-and-a-tomcat proposed to your future wife in an IHOP by burying the ring between layers of her Strawberry-Shortcake French Toast.
I guess people write these stories, post these pictures, and use up gigabytes because they think they are fascinating. That they matter. That by virtually posting a story about their life, they make it that much more important. The power of published association. "Hey! Paris Hilton published a book and talks about her troubled teenage years! I wrote about that on my Facebook page too! I'm just like Paris Hilton!"
With Web 2.0 bring the allure and promise (no matter how small) of famousness and purpose to Average Joe, people seem to have lost sight of the fact that 99% of people's lives are painfully, dreadfully boring. No, I don't think the fact that your daughter just learned to use the potty is worth "Liking." I don't want to comment on this picture of you standing on top of Smokey Hill Crest. If you were standing on top of Mount Everest, now that would be something worth talking about. But as it is, the hike took you half and hour and didn't even warrant bringing a water bottle, so why on earth did you feel compelled to bring your camera? Take a picture of yourself tossing up a peace sign? And then put it up on the great World Wide Web?
Reading people's mundane lives colored in the neon shades that used to be reserved for really important stuff makes me sad. It makes me sad that the highlight of your wedding, which you compare to "The gold-threaded linen of royalty," is going to be the BeDazzled napkins. That you aren't going to make it to the top of Mount Everest, won't even make it to the right continent to do that, that you might never leave the state. That seeing a touring show of "Disney on Ice" is the closest you will ever get to a real vacation within a 50 mile radius of DisneyWorld.
Life can kind of suck. And I guess I wouldn't mind so much if people didn't make it seem like their mundane existence was somehow more than it is. Not that I want people to wander around in a depressed funk, but making the absolutely boring seem exciting makes the truly exciting less so. If I get famous, I want it to be legitimate. I want to do something awesome. I don't want to fool myself into thinking that that's true when it's not by making my trip to the grocery store seem like some impossible trek. Are people no longer happy living their lives as what they are? Lots of people dream of being a movie star, but realize it's not going to happen. Has Web 2.0 simply allowed us to hold on to this dream without letting go and coming to terms with our comparatively small existence? Can we no longer grow up? Do we honestly believe that we truly can be famous? That everyone has some talent worth global celebration?
Welcome to the future, where everyone is a star, and not for any good reason.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)