Was writing about excitement, how it’s important for Singaporeans to have something to be excited about, talked about music, about writing and startups, and then went into talking about social media. Let’s go on.
I quickly became a very heavy social media user. I was a moderately casual friendster user, but I was a heavy myspace user because I played in a band and I wanted my band to be popular and famous. Our music was shit, so I dealt with this by competing on relationships- I wrote personalized messages to as many real people as I could, and I maintained as many conversations as I possibly could. I think at my peak I might have been juggling hundreds of conversations (asynchronous, of course- not all in real-time). I also think I’ve always had an appetite for over-sharing and for writing a great deal. If you google “Gamefaqs The 0rochi Slayer” you’ll find a couple of FAQs that I wrote when I was a kid. I wasn’t actually a great player, but I was determined to carve out a space for myself in the FAQ world. Nobody had written FAQs for those characters, and I had an idea then of how an FAQ ought to look like, and so I went ahead and did it.
So I’ve always had this edgy creative energy. Well maybe not ALWAYS, but I used to read so much that it’ll just spill out of me. And I developed that skill set of always having something to say, always having a comeback, always arguing, always negotiating, always discussing, thinking, learning… it’s a part of my identity. I got really good at it and it became something with a mind of its own.And when I brought this with me to Facebook, it just developed further… and I became the equivalent of a chain-smoker on social media. Always online, always having discussions, always have something to say.
I’d get rewarded for it with likes and shares, and it all felt really good emotionally. But it also felt a lot like running in the same place. There’s a certain paradox that emerges- when you’re busy trying to sound smart, you don’t have the time, space or energy to actually develop real “smartness”- which I will define as genuine perspective, informed opinion. You can’t do your research in the heat of keyboard-battle or the latest news cycle. If you care about making real contributions, I think you owe it to yourself to step away from social media from time to time.
I went off Facebook and found myself suddenly spending a lot more time on Twitter. It was like my brain has this nervous, anxious energy that spills out, and this energy follows the path of least resistance. Facebook was the first. When I dammed that one up, Twitter was next. When I dammed that one (not as drastically as Facebook, because I still do use Twitter for work related purposes), I actually found myself going to Tumblr to write a little. It was spilling out of me. I’ll keep looking for the next person to talk to.
I noticed this happening with SMSes, too. When I was in NS, there was a period of time when my then-girlfriend (now-wife) went overseas. I was stuck in camp, and I was used to messaging her random stuff at night. When she was gone, I found myself having stuff to say- and I’d have to look through my phone to find other people to tell it to.
But you could never quite talk about exactly the same thing, because two people develop a certain mutual language that others won’t entirely understand- I’m not talking about english here, I’m talking about motifs. If I learn something cool about comics or roman history or something, I’m going to be messaging Damien. Something about christianity, U2, music, art, that sort of thing? Sam. Every relationship is unique, and populated by common themes and ideas… and this influences the way you see the world, you start seeing things with the lens of “Heh, sharan would love this, I should tell her”. And this is part of the long list of reasons why breakups (romantic or otherwise) suck, because then there’s a part of your brain that’s like a phantom limb- even if the person is gone, you still have all the relevant infrastructure/machinery/capital in your head. And that always hurts.
So yeah. Anxious nervous creative energy, I has it. But I used to typically squander it on Facebook. Not saying that Facebook itself is necessarily bad- sometimes I think I wrote a nice little essay or update that might’ve made people smile, which is nice… but there are bigger and better things that I could do instead that have more lasting effects than something clever or witty. I could create some real meaningful content, go out and interview somebody, or read a book and review it… these things are typically more useful.
And I seriously think a blogpost is almost always more useful to the world than a Facebook status update, even if only for purely structural reasons- a blogpost is relatively eternal in cyberspace compared to a Facebook status update. It’s indexed and searchable on Google. My old “teacher cannot shave head” blogpost suddenly got thousands of hits because of the st margs saga. I wasn’t expecting that, but that’s the cool thing about blogs. It’s like casting a constantly expanding net into the ocean in a way that keeps moving- you might not have any fish now, but you will in the future!
So you really should blog if you aren’t blogging. But somehow people don’t understand what I’m saying when I tell them this. They don’t realize how blogging makes you more employable, makes your work more valuable, gives you an audience… I really don’t get why they don’t get it, but as long as they do, I have an unfair competitive advantage. I’ll take whatever I get.
Erm so I wanted to talk about how I don’t feel like I need Facebook in my life anymore, even though it was a total addiction for me a while ago- first thing I check every time I get on a computer, I need that notification fix. It made me feel significant, like i mattered.
This addiction was interesting to contemplate- i used to be a video game addict, and in anticipation of that I swore to myself never to install games on my smartphone, because I imagine I’d regress into pathetic addiction. Well my wife installed minion rush and bakery story on my phone- and strangely, i’ve only played a little of the former and absolutely none of the latter.
This is interesting to me. I used to be obsessive about games like Simcity and I used to play Mafia Wars quite a bit on Facebook. Why do I not bother anymore? I think the answer partially lies in the work that I do- I already kind of optimize things at work, so that part of my brain is kind of used up. The idea of bothering with optimizing a fictional bakery strikes me as almost grotesque- there are so many real things in the world that need optimizing, why bother with something in a game? (I used to be on the opposite side of that argument- games teach you skills that you can apply in the real world- but I guess once you lose your training wheels, there’s no reason to get back on them.)
I had some time to kill a while ago when I was early for dinner with friends, so I thought I’d spend a bit of money at a video game arcade I used to get all excited about going to. I went there and looked around for a while, watched people playing some of my old favourite games. I expected to want to spend a little money to relive it all, but strangely, I didn’t. It almost looked a little sad- I saw a few guys dressed in shirts and pants, obviously dropping by after work to relive their childhoods maybe… what does it mean? Isn’t it a kind of escapism?
It occurs to me that I could say the same about smoking. I’ve greatly decreased the amount I smoke, but I still enjoy the occasional cigarette… why though? Intellectually I know it’s stupid and unhealthy and smelly and all of those things. Is it possible that I will one day feel for cigarettes the way I feel about playing bakery story or going to the video arcade? I think it’s possible. I wonder if it’s possible to engineer/accelerate that process. I’ll be thinking about that one. Seems like I’ll need to get my high/fix from something else. Maybe writing/work. We’ll see.
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