Social (Networking) Studies.

Social networking and I have a complicated relationship. Some days, I just want to chuck my cell phone out the window, let the battery die on my computer and let the internet go. Pretend like it didn't happen while laying on a beach somewhere, or out in nature, out in the world actually talking to people. Face to face, not facebook to facebook.

Then of course, there are days where I check my facebook every five seconds, or inbetween every youtube video and tweet that says something like, "Man I love Starbucks frappuccino's!" or "I've watched five straight hours of Deadliest Catch! The Bering Sea is so BA!"

Needless to say, the world can survive without my constant useless updates and bizarre impulses to watch a baby panda sneeze over and over again.

There is a lot to be said about balance when it comes to social networking. It's definitely achievable. You have to find the sharing in it. There really is nothing like finding a hilarious youtube video and just sending it out in every possible direction.

A friend of mine calls this Twitter therapy. Taking feelings and just sending them out there, not knowing where they're going to land, if anyone is going to care, but just knowing that they're out, and you've expressed yourself is enough. Maybe it's as simple as an "AGHHHHHHHH" tweet or facebook status. Maybe you keep retweeting about the oil spill in the Gulf because you want the world to know how angry it makes you. Friends and family are no longer enough- everyone has to know. You are making a statement about yourself, and you don't care who finds it. Here I am, here are my thoughts.

Social bookmarking is interesting this way. I have a feeling that someday psychological studies will be done on what we think is important enough to save, rescued from the cast aways of the thousands of web pages we look at in a given week. Almost like a diary, really. You could go back to a certain day and know exactly what you were worried about, or what actress you thought was important, what youtube video made you laugh.

So called "Folksonomy" is part of this too. Our lives are expanding so that even our organizational systems have to change. We can no longer file things under one subject, because things have different angles and views now. It isn't just "photography", it's "California", "retro", "new age", "photoshopped", "polaroid"...you get the idea. Our worlds are expanding to fit our needs. Each one of these labels could be just as important as the most obvious of "photography".

It is so much easier for me to tag like this, because my mind works like the above diagram from the EdVibes article "What Why and How to Tag". Folksonomy is a perfect for me, because I constantly catagorize things in this web-like way.