Do you Myspace? Do you Facebook? Do you blog, Instant Message or Twitter? Do you do all of the above? If you can answer yes to all of these then you may be part of the growing trend of easy access socializing. Long gone is the need to physically meet people to communicate. Now with the push of a few buttons even the local nobody can spread his or her “words of wisdom” to the masses. As this trend grows I have to stop and ask a few questions of the online multi-socializing crowd. Do you manage so many personal sites with any degree of censorship or moderation? Are you guilty of typing without any discretion, saying too much and slipping into the realm of TMI?
The vast majority of all these sites are open to the public and very easy to find with little to no detailed knowledge of the person that runs it. I’ve goggled my own email or screen names before and been very surprised at how much stuff it links to. I say that to say this, with the growing number of communicative options at our disposal, it seems people simply don’t care what they type into the public space of the World Wide Web anymore. I understand the therapeutic value of blogging vs. a written journal or diary but are there any topics that need not see the cyber light of day? How many twitter lines are filled with explicit sexual content and conversation and then in the next line said twitter user is claiming to be online for business? Just how serious will you take someone you happen to encounter twittering that was just going back and back with any and everyone about how she likes to get choked during sex? Does a MySpace status message that says “I’m the reason ya bitch is always home late” say anything positive about the person in question?
Maybe it’s all subjective. Maybe it’s simply a matter of personal taste. Different strokes for different folks, but we witness the fact that as more and more sites and socializing tools pop up the average age of the user is getting younger and younger while the content is getting rawer and more explicit. It may serve some people to think twice about what their typing before hitting that submit or send button. Words and the information they give are very powerful and a lot of people, in the midst of their online chit chat, are leaving very little to the imagination and giving up quite a bit of information. Let’s hope the wrong person doesn’t stumble across it.