Three. A belated update.

Being a supreme procrastinator I am finding it difficult to maintain a daily schedule writing a blog.  Obviously people who can maintain such schedules are either being paid to do so or have nothing better to do.  So I am foregoing the “Days” in my title line and am going to just continue to number them.  I was here 48 hours ago, after an hour long diatribe in response to an article on wealthy Americans giving advice (my previous post) and just checked on that original article to see what type of responses I did get there.

I had one that was an actual response, but was not so much an actual reply as it was another tangential rant about people with money and the state of the economy and how only jobs will fix America, so I guess she agrees with me.  At the top of the post I received five thumbs up and two thumbs down which are devoid of comment.  This equates to a 71% approval rating.  Meaning, if extrapolated, 29% of readers would likely disagree with me.  Oh well.

I don’t know what to do about that.

In one of the many emails I received I found a link to a white paper entitled Mastering Public Relations in Social Media.  This is probably something I should read.  In fact it is something I am going to attempt to read and more importantly, try to comprehend.

I am not fascinated by social media, rather, I am perplexed by it.  Mainly because I have been, in the past, diagnosed as a narcissist.  I do not deny that this is true.  I am narcissistic and I do not understand why that is a bad thing to some people.  I think it bothers those most who have self-esteem issues.  I think everyone should take pride in themselves, especially if they have some type of accomplishment to be proud of.  This is where my confusion lies when it comes to social media.  A lot of entities shouting out “Look at me!  Over here.  I’m cool.” and on Twitter they find themselves with droves of followers and on Facebook legions of friends.  What’s in it for the followers and friends?

I guess I understand one side of the coin; talking about yourself, or your business or project or idea and promoting it, but when it comes to being one who jumps on board to whatever bandwagon gets them excited, I have to say, it’s really tough to get me excited.  I am just not inclined to read tweets to find out anything, nor am I one to rifle through page upon page of Facebook to find out much about anyone.  Unless I am searching for somebody specific or an actual piece of useful information the voyeurism aspect does not engage me at all.  Not even sure I should say sorry, but as a dedicated narcissist, I can not honestly say I am interested in what anybody is doing unless it affects me.

So that is my problem with social media.  There is a lot of useless information out there.  It appears that it is an extension of the magazines that greet us at checkout counters with pictures of people pregnant, divorced or engaged who are extremely popular to somebody, apparently a lot of people if they make the covers of magazines, but I have no idea who they are.  Nor am I inclined to find out.

My obstinacy apparently holds me at bay from something.  It must, or I would not wonder about it.  I do read news on the internet, I have scanned tweets and at times wound up on a Facebook page, but it doesn’t do anything for me.

Try as I might to be fascinated, I am not.  That is not to say it never happens.  I enjoy physics and cosmology immensely and love to hear astronomers suppose what the universe may be like far beyond what the eye can see and theory suggests is out there.  But even if Stephen Hawking had a blog, and he probably does, I doubt I would look it up and read it.  This is why I am somewhat confident mine will never be read.

Just like the billions of stars and galaxies in the ever expanding universe I am but one writer in a menagerie that grows constantly at an immeasurable speed.

I would bet Stephen Hawking would love to ponder that equation: how fast is the internet growing?  How big can it possibly get?  Are there pages that will never be seen?  And if not – do they truly exist?