I'm what some would call a "social media junkie." I can't get enough of trends, memes, feeds, blogs, badges, bots and Boolean.
Before Lindsay Lohan's first tear hit the courtroom floor, the folks over at @eonline informed me "Lindsay Lohan Sentenced to 90 Days In Jail!"
Oh, snap!
Totally useless information ...
But Twitter can also provide a wealth of interesting and useful information. With one scroll you can find out where tar balls are washing up, what the score in the latest World Cup match is and what the traffic conditions are 20 miles from your house.
Social media can be both banal and beautiful.
However, to extend the junkie metaphor, its banality is like the baking powder in crack - it's an ingredient of what you want but it's not what you're selling your kid's bike for.
Social media is one big active sociological experiment. Information is introduced, disseminated and digested. From it all springs culture - Internet culture. And that cultural dialogue is the truly addictive appeal of social media. It forms and is formed by communication.
The way people tweak and manipulate language on the Internet is just the most recent step in the natural and ancient progression of communication.
But some of those tweaks are annoying. And it's killing my buzz. So I compiled a list of social media pet peeves.
Porn stars.
At first following porn stars on Twitter seems like an amusing way to break up the monotony of the economic news, sports headlines, developments from around the world and friends' random musings. A tweet about a porn convention proves to be a welcome respite between updates about Senate hearings, squandered public funds and BP's environmental malfeasance.
But then you realize that porn stars are not the brightest lot and they always try to lure people into spending money. And if they're not trying to hook you with a link to their site, they are re-tweeting an inane message from a male porn star (if there is such a thing) or posting a risque picture to which every stalker on the Internet will comment in increasingly creepy ways - like a creeper competition.
But that brings my to my next point:
The overuse, and misuse, of the term "stalker."
For some people the term is deserved but merely looking at your friends' information on Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare does not mean you are a stalker. There's no sitting in park cars. There are no trench coats. There are no hair dolls. There are no restraining orders.
It's information that people have voluntarily made public. The term stalker casts a negative connotation on anyone using social media. It implies that the user is loser who follows people home.
I don't follow people home and I don't think many other Internet-users do either - the term is annoying.
Tweeting about what you're eating.
Bottom line with most of the mundane: if it's not unique, I don't care.
Unless you're mowin' down on those crazy monkey heads from the dinner scene in "Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom," I don't really care about what you're noshing.
That's not to say I don't pay attention to a tweet or a post about a good restaurant, an interesting dish or good recipe. But "made a PB&J. looked down. There's a hole in the toe of my sock" doesn't qualify as a contribution in any sense.
Hearing about the plot of Glee/LOST/The Bachelor/any other TV show.
Again, mundane. And nothing I wouldn't already know if I wanted to.
Now if you tweet "My buddy Jake's face spontaneously combusted while watching the series finale of LOST tonight! Burned my couch," that wouldn't be so mundane. Someone's face catching on fire is more interesting than a nip slip from Kate.
Lowercasing the "G" in God.
In English "God" is a proper noun. It doesn't mean you capitalize the pronouns referring to the deity like a crazy person. It just means you capitalize the "G" when referring to the Judeo-Christian entity. The rules for proper nouns are simple but in this situation, when they are broken, it is a message in and of itself.
People always seem to be lower-casing the letter so as to remind everyone of their disdain for those poor illiterate simpletons who still believe such an antiquated and oppressive figure. They tweet so as to expose the absurdity of the basis of other peoples' beliefs while establishing their own superiority.
"Thank god I found a taxi home from my agnostic book club meeting, hehe."
We get it. You're heart-breakingly unique and there is no greater being in the universe than you. There is no mystery. There is no mystique. There are just stimuli and reactions and you're just a douche bag.
These are by no means the only annoying things about social media. I mean constantly updating your friends as to your geographic location, i.e. "I'm at the 7-11 on 5th and main drinking a Slushie and eating a SlimJim" is also pointless and annoying but you've got to draw the line somewhere.
But I could always write another post...