DEFACED BOOK

What part of  the term 'Social Network' makes me think I can ever properly inhabit virtual worlds like 'Facebook' or 'Linkedin'. Let's face it, I have been and always will be socially challenged. Well, sure...here I am posting to the blog sphere. And I have been a member of both 'Facebook' and 'Linkedin', and some other social networks from time to time. But I never truly fit in on those sites.

From early in my youth, living in a large family of 9 in a little three bedroom two batch house I have been awkward in any situations with more then a handful of people. Socially I am more a observer than a partaker. I love people and personality in small group settings and small doses. But at a party I am as awkward as a nun in a strip club.

The blog works ok because my actual audience is small, and my real audience is even smaller. My audience is the few people that are actually linked to this. The real audience is probably really just myself. Like a diary, writing makes me feel better, it helps me get ideas of my chest, I enjoy it and always have. There is the occasional exhibitionist side of me...but for the most part that gets suppressed by my hermit tendencies.


The main problem for me is 'small talk'. My 'small talk' skills are sorry and weak. I never remember jokes. I love puns, because that is really playing with words which is really writing (poetry), and I'm good with that. But the short interesting tidbits and fascinating subjects and intriguing inquiries completely abandon me at parties. And what comes out on my FACEBOOK entries reflects that too. I get a lot of silence and ? and odd replies on my posts... I never get the 20 posts my daughters get when they post some cute saying or request for advice. Nor should I. The things my mind comes up with just do not work in the social setting.

Puns, innuendos, double entendres, and sarcasm don't seem to fit in well socially. They sometime work in smaller groups, but in larger social networks they fizzle. 

I guess I still get enough out of the social sites to warrant visiting from time to time. It is fun to learn things about my daughters and friends via these networks. But being a shadow lurking in the background makes me feel a lot like I do at parties and other social gatherings...a wall flower or voyeur, there but not really there. I understand why people love social networks, and more power to them, I wish I was more socially adept.

I am who I am.

Cheers, nca