Some people feel that need to have to know and to connect and maybe have literally hundreds of people they want to remain in contact with if they are social butterflies a la Paris Hilton;
There's no need to be mean.
That was not my intent though i can see how a comparison to Paris can be degrading for some but very much a complement to others. Have you not seen the Paris Hilton BFF show?
It is another online sensation that over time, will pass, and something else will take its place. It started with the likes of IRC chat (or the old 'bulletin boards' during dialup days of Commodores), moved to things like ICQ, then myspace, now facebook, twitter, etc.
There was the telephone before all that, and it seems like according to you, if you really are friends with people, even that "tool" shouldn't have to be used. Instead, they should be in the same room at all times. Otherwise, you're living in the past, when they were in the same room.
This is taken out of context from the continuation of the post before this one. I was referring to both an age category and the extensive use of these new 'tools'. Perhaps when the telephone first came out there was something of a sensation, however how many people do you know these days that spend hours on the phone EVERY day talking with friends and relatives?
EVERY day?
Certainly there are still those early teen years where the girls talk about the boys on the phone for hours on end until their parents yell at them to get off the phone, and so on (pardon any quick stereotypes but this one is actually true); but last i checked most adults don't spend hours on the phone every day talking with their girlfriends about husbands unless they are REALLY bored (perhaps no formal day job, maybe stay at home and not with a house of 5 kids...).
Now take into consideration these new online tools. There are people out there, NOT just teens, who are texting hundreds of tweets a day plus IM messages like these things were feeding them crack for every message sent.
Hundreds.
Hell there are contests with this now. Who the hell can do 500 messages each day and not spend anything less than 3-5 hours with such a gadget?
Has the phone been replaced?
No, cell phones are the new in so now we have a blend of cell and facebooks and twits, tweets,...
So yes, screw the gadget, get together in person and actually enjoy a real person's (or perhaps your families') company instead of thumbing messages until one is blue in the face.
The idea of online/digital communication can do wonders for personal or should i say, impersonal contact, but the obsession or at least extensive use beyond say the level used for a traditional telephone makes me wonder if there is an addiction issue related to such phenomena.
Let's ask the doc medic8r about the mystery of the human mind in this regard.
The bottom line
Are people just sheep going with the herd with popular cultural digital social networking tools or are they feeding us electronic crack?[end rant]
