netizen vs. real life

i feel i've drifted away from my former life as a solid netizen, to one that's more present in my real world surroundings. i'm more involved in my local community, i do more activities in my area, rather than just partaking of them online. in general, i find myself living a life that's less isolated, more grounded in my surroundings and far more properly dressed than it was. and i'm spending a whole lot less time online. i think it's made me less in touch with the culture of the blogosphere than i was, but perhaps i just feel less of that culture than i did.

but that culture is also changing. ironically, there are more blogs than ever, but i think people read them less. we read in a different way than we did just a couple of years ago. we read on devices, on the go, rather than sitting in front of our laptops. this means we leave less comments. as much as i adore my iPhone and iPad, i'm not THAT fond of typing anything of any substance on them (and odin knows that all of my comments are full of substance). we might ponder just as much an interesting post we've read, but we don't necessarily let the writer know that we were there. and it might not even show that we were, thanks to various readers and such.

i think blogging has changed, even for me. i'm less driven to share every thought (which largely has to do with the aforementioned, undoubtedly). but it's also because i share those snippets i once shared here in other ways (e.g. on facebook and instagram and less so, via twitter). and all of the pretty things i find, i pin now on pinterest instead of linking and pondering here (come to think of that, i kind of miss the old way - pinterest is actually rather impersonal in many ways).

flickr (with which i've always had a love-hate relationship) is largely over for me as a social network. i don't even bother to add my photos to groups anymore (i'm not even really sure when it stopped). it's really just a place in the cloud to park and categorize my photos and a place from which to retrieve my instagram photos for blog posts without actually plugging my phone into iPhoto (tho' that may be solved by iOS6, i've yet to fully explore it, but i've heard there's now iPhoto on the phone).

i guess what i mean by all of this is that i've moved back towards flesh & blood real life. and i think i miss the matrix a little bit, even as i am slightly relieved to be more present where i am here and now.

how do you think the blogosphere has changed in recent years?

ponderable or has the world gone completely mad...

i just read about the hubbub over the supposed disappearance of south carolina governor mark sanford. two thirds of a page of my danish newspaper were devoted to the story this morning. apparently, the governor took a few days offline to go hiking in the appalachians. he had lost a very public battle during the legislative session and told his wife and his minders that he was taking a few days off. he was a bit secretive about it and his staff and even his wife and four children claimed not to know where he was. he finally called from somewhere on the appalachian trail and was shocked at the outcry over his disappearance, so he said he would be back in the office on wednesday.  i have no opinion about gov. sanford, who has been talked about in connection with a presidential bid in 2012. well, not no opinion exactly, but he's a republican, so i could really care less whether this hurts his chances.

what's interesting to me about the story is that little thing we found ourselves joking about during blog camp. do we exist if we're not online? because that seems to be the rub here. the governor didn't phone or text or tweet or update his facebook status for five whole days. therefore he, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. there's even talk of whether it's a violation of the south carolina constitution. i don't know that much about south carolina, but i'm going to hazard a guess that in the history of that state, there's been decades where governors were not online and times when it was difficult to reach them by phone or messenger or even pony express. what does it say about the times we live in that someone can't go offline? seriously, what important thing is going to happen in south carolina that it might fall apart if they can't reach their governor? last time i checked, they were on good terms with north carolina, so no danger of invasion and it's not quite hurricane season yet. leave the man alone, people.

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i think i've gone off flickr. i'm tired of invitations to contribute my photos to groups with elaborate rules about how you must comment on x number of other photos to the left of and just down from your photo, but only the odd numbered ones if it's wednesday and even ones if it's tuesday. especially the ones where they want you to use their stupid little logo widget thingie to comment with. if i have something to say, i'll say it. if i like a photo, i fave it. if i join a group, naturally i look at the other photos in it. i don't need to be forced by the flickr group police to do these things. if you really want my photo in your group, you won't have a bunch of crap ass strings attached to it. and if you do, you'll find that i won't be contributing my photo. not anymore. you bunch of asinine flickr nazis.

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i think maybe staying up late for the sankt hans celebration on the lake and getting up early this morning wasn't such a good idea.