Facebook and Twitter. Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook and Twitter. Scarcely a day will pass that I haven’t, at some point or
another, logged on to browse and click at the screen like a demented,
technologically dependent sloth. We all do it.
The thing about Facebook is that you have
people on there that you clearly don’t give a rat’s ass about. People who you
met once five years ago who constantly post pictures of themselves in the
mirror, so much so that you start seeing their face in a nightmare that
involves you being permanently wired up to a monitor as someone quite literally
‘pokes’ you until you cry.
I have nearly 600 ‘friends’ on Facebook. I
have no way near 600 friends in real life (in fact I find it hard to believe that I've met anywhere near 600 people throughout my life). Everyone has their closest friends,
not hard to distinguish. After that you have tertiary friends then acquaintances
and, in the case of Facebook, everybody else. All the people who sent you friend
requests which, if they had been rejected at the time, would have caused unnecessary
friction, but now no one cares about. Chances are, you and I are other people's 'everybody else.'
The great thing about Twitter is that there
are programs that allow you to check who’s unfollowed you. It gives you quite a
rush to see who the guilty ones are under the knowledge that they thought they’d
got away with it; even if it’s someone you know personally. Recently I lost two
followers; one person I knew from primary School and one from High School. Not
that they care that they didn’t ‘get away with it’ and not that I care that
they unfollowed me. To be honest I’m quite glad they made the first move
because they were both boring as hell anyway. Also, it’s quite sadistic the way
you feel as you unfollow them back, as well as trying to distinguish which
tweet it was that sent them over the edge.
That aside, the social browser
syndrome epidemically sweeping the nation, looks set to grow faster than the norovirus on a cruise ship
and the impending start to the second semester of year number two doesn’t bode
well in helping me to eradicate this monster, much like the Mexican mucus thing
from the Lemsip adverts, that sits on my shoulder and bids me to browse Twitter
two seconds after the last time I looked and there wasn’t anything there.
My course has very limited hours which allows
more ‘free time’ than other, much more lecture based subjects. Although University
adverts lead you to believe that students with spare time go kayaking in
Australia and dancing with kids in Africa, the reality is that most are in
their rooms, browsing social networking sites, trying to avoid the essay they’ve
had four weeks to do that’s due in tomorrow that currently has only a title. A
title they neither understand nor care about.
The fact is that Facebook is rubbish and Twitter
is good. To be honest, with the odd exception of a few people here and there
who aren’t on Twitter but are on Facebook, I could quite easily get rid of my
Facebook account.
But then I wouldn’t have anything to help me
avoid doing work.
