Cameron Conner : The Orange Lemonade

The web is a wonderful thing- connecting us with long lost friends, far away family, or meeting new people from places you’d never be able to visit, it has allowed communication and collaboration on a scale never before seen. You can go and check out reviews for a restaurant in New York while planning your trip from your couch (or bed, or wherever–though I must caution you, don’t use a computer in the bath… It could go bad really quickly), or watch six people living in a house with 60 high-definition cameras, live 24-7, aspiring to become actors, musicians, and models (If I Can Dream). If you brought someone from even the 1980s to now and showed them what’s possible, they’d go crazy. I mean, I have a phone which can browse the web, take pictures, check weather in London, and holds thousands of songs, and videos, and, oh yeah, makes phone calls. But when is it too much?

When is there too much connectivity? When does it get to the point that too many people know too much about you? I mean, do your 600 so-called friends on facebook really need to know that you slipped in the shower and crushed the cat? Why am I compelled to pull my phone out and check facebook status updates at least three times a day?

First off, I think it can be pretty easy to move from the “this is cool” to “my grandmother just called me because she saw that one of my friends’ moms posted that I went to a pool party with booze and now she’s yelling at me”. And I haven’t said anything at all about the possibility, nay, the reality that the government(s) are watching what you’re posting, not to mention the companies that own facebook/twitter/youtube/wordpress/etc. Or how incredibly easy it is to stalk someone now because of these things.

Secondly, why am I compelled to pull out my phone to check facebook 3 times a day? Why am I not checking out the new york times or CNN? Probably because the real news is too real- it’s too sad and depressing and overwhelming. The world, if all you do is listening to the news, is going to hell in a handbasket..Or actually, it’s already there but the damn taxi hasn’t picked it up from the airport yet. So we turn to social media stuff, like facebook and twitter, because the “little people” (and not the dwarf and midget kind) don’t have problems that big. Sure, they might seem that big to them, but in the grand scheme of things, you falling and crushing the cat, while it sucks, isn’t nuclear war. It’s more like a very, very small genocide (they do have 9 lives after all. You’re a serial killer now.).

In the end, (and I’m not exactly sure where I was going with this) it’s a balancing game. Don’t rely on facebook too much, it might be gone tomorrow. Don’t post things that could get you in trouble, because they very well could. Think before giving a company your information, don’t ever use the same password at a bank that you do at facebook or AIM. And for god’s sake, don’t let your boyfriend video you having sex. It WILL end up online.