My life on the Internets

I stumbled upon a guy named Kevin Lim and his blog just right now and he got me to thinking. He calls himself a social cyborg and without reading into it too much and seeing what his shtick really is (and why he has over a thousand readers and more than 700 followers [?? underlings/someone to make him PB&J sandwiches while he broadcasts his life on the internet??] ) I can see why he calls himself a social cyborg. He's experimenting upon the effects of having even more public switches that affect him in some way. Spreading himself out thin over things like Blogger, his very nice Wordpress site, and many other social networking sites is interesting because in essence he's getting social feedback (while also affecting people connected to him) on everything he does. He's pursuing a doctorate in communications in SUNY. (Ballin'!) Interestingly, the web already allows so many things in our life to be tracked. One example is my music graph I posted a while back showing a year's worth of my music taste. Another example is the practical applications since the introduction of Google Earth. One can readily see the potential of attaching rich information onto maps, but showing people news like the genocide in Darfur that immediately connects to them with live information of the destruction of villages on Google Earth maps is just plain powerful. It's like always citing the omniscient eye in your internal soliloquies but it actually existing. 

Information like that is very relevant in my opinion, and I firmly believe that my ability to become even more self-aware with technology like this is reflective of how the most pressing problem our generation faces is the "Oh, shit f'real" moment we're all experiencing in seeing the real damage we've been doing to the Earth in our fleeting existence on this universe's massive timeline. 

I mentioned that this got me to thinking. So to date, I have been on MySpace, Facebook, Last.fm, Blogger.com, and I had a simple rule when I was to participate in the game of Life on the Internets: not to be fake. The scary parts of what the Internet (and it's promise of instant connectivity) is that what we see has even more potential to not be real. Cue in creepy virtual reality a la Minority Report or identity theft on the level of Ghost in the Shell. So I figure being real is the least I can do. (wink) 

I will just mention a couple things that do tempt the devil of fakery: 

1. Untagging pictures: I admit I've done a couple, but keeping them on is actually good incentive to look better. (How superficial, huh? Hey, just keepin it real.) Work it out, people. This is also done for occupational reasons especially as the facebook generation drops the iPod for the Blackberry, but man, I just imagine profiles with that same damn smile on all 600 of their profile pictures. Not just ugly, but profane.  
2. Emo blog posts: Guilty. I just put this here because really, when you post an emo blog post, you're always over exaggerating. I don't care. It's true. (I'll try to follow my own advice in this hurr blog) 
3. Updating a status that doesn't warrant updating: I just think practically this only works on AIM and GChat nowadays. (I guess facebook, twitter, and whatever) Maybe I just think getting OCD over a status is just silly. 
4. Not blogging: Ultimately the most sinful, I believe the stifling of expression especially when we have been given this democratic environment, kills the soul. Let it out. Hug it out. 

Ahh. That's better. I should also put up there posting unnecessary pictures but shit that's fun.

 What's that I'm holding? The smallest violin.