"Ambient awareness", or, I was just thinking that...

[Stan4dSteph]

I would love to be able to socialize with more people face-to-face. The problem is that most of the people I consider good friends don't live within 1,000 miles of me. I like Twitter, but most of the time I am like Alex said, coming in too late and people have moved on to something new.

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by Alex

Maybe I've just self filtered around it, but on LJ, iSm is the only person I've seen who regularly posts more than a paragraph or two.

Or 37 as the case (often) may be.


But I don't find the pitfall of Excluding Outsiders any more insideous than already exists from message board participation or, in my case particularly, from simple real life outside of the 'net.

It just so happens that I'm shy with strangers, and not a good small talker with people I don't know. So at a social gathering .... I will generally not make friendly with strangers unless there is NO ONE else I know. If there's so much as one person I know at a party of 50, I will likely spend my entire time there talking with that one person.


So, for me at least, neither Twitter nor the LoT nor any other form of internet communication negatively affects the Outsider ... who is simply going to have a difficult time of it. And that's, I think, just the general trend of society ... and group outsiders will have to work at it a bit if they want to become group insiders.


As for Twitter in particular ... I find it's not about what I thought it would be about. And that's been true for lot of 'net communitation modes.

Yeah, some people post about what they had for lunch. But I find it's often less trivial than that. And even more than the space-fillers that let you maintain a more constant flow of relationship with friends you seen often, I enjoy Twitter for keeping up with friends I see rarely. I have a few friends in Vegas who tweet, and I love the opportunity to keep up with them without having to reach out individually via phone or I.M., which I'm less likely to do. I wish more of my L.A. friends I see less often would take up the Twitter habit.

And as for friends I see often anyway, I don't see how it's different from certain real life situations, such as just happened over this weekend. A bunch of us went to dinner and show on Friday night, and just about all those same people attended all or part of a 12-hour brunch the next day. Although there was a sleep break in between, it felt as if it were one continous event. And I suppose Twitter can, in effect, similarly bridge face-to-face time to give folks the warm feeling of continuity. The LoT does the very same thing.


For someone who tends to write at length (witness this post as Exhibit "A"), I LOVE the enforced haiku of Twitter. It's not what I expected, and I have a hard time convincing people to give it a try.

But to each their own. I thought I'd dig Facebook, and I hate it. I doubted I'd get off on el jay, and I took to it like a duck to water. And, ya know, things change. I used to I.M. a whole lot, and now rarely ever. I used to post regularly on 3 or 4 message boards, and now it's just the LoT.


But the variety of what's available to socialize and communicate is fantastic, and I hope to see it grow.


Meanwhile, the general trend of the internet for me has been to find new friends, not exclude them. I trust the overall trend will continue, even if exclusionary bubbles appear from time to time.

[Not Afraid]

I'm finding I really like Twitter because I can get "caught up" on snipits of people's lives in a way that fits into my crazy schedule. I used to have more time to post on LoT and other message boards. Now, LoT is my only board and I miss a lot of stuff here because I simply don't have time to read.

I'm actually going to see if i can take Twitter to a creative level next week. Again, I don't have a lot of time for creative projects, but if i can fit a snipit of creativity into my twittering I may end up somewhat happier.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

I love the ease and overlap between tweeting and socializing. It's great for bringing small-talk to a more informed, intimate level. It happened to me all weekend, whether it was me bringing up a tweet, or someone else.

"Hey, ms.pod, how was your week? I saw you were working late a lot of those days - what cool project are you doing now?"

"Hey, NA, I saw your tweet about the bad Bossa Nova concert. Tell me more, because I can't imagine how you could kill Bossa Nova!"

"Hey, Commodore, tell us about Victor Garber!"

"Hey, LSPE, tell me about the plus-sized fashion party you went to!"

Now I know what my friends are up to, a garnered from very short bursts of communication, and it gives me the opportunity to start conversations (or be asked) about intriguing little tidbits of life that require more explanation. They're like tiny little mysteries and it's up to me to inquire more about them.

I still LJ. Probably about one chunky post every other week. Mine are usually more essay-based, because I prefer blog entries that are, you know, structured with an interesting skeleton. I must not be on your lists - or perhaps the more active LJers push mine down and away from sight. But one thing I don't do on LJ any more are my "blurt" posts, when I would post several sentence-long statements about things I'd been thinking about. Those are what Twitter was designed for.

[CoasterMatt]

I only twitter if I don't take my medicine

[Alex]

Originally Posted by LSPoorEeyorick

Now I know what my friends are up to, a garnered from very short bursts of communication, and it gives me the opportunity to start conversations (or be asked) about intriguing little tidbits of life that require more explanation. They're like tiny little mysteries and it's up to me to inquire more about them.

I guess that might be one key difference. I don't see my online friends in real life all that often. So a tiny little mystery is going to remain a tiny little mystery.

[Moonliner]

All this sounds like a lot of work. I think I'm happy just not having any friends.

[Sohrshah]

Originally Posted by lashbear

Well, some people haven't even been invited to your friends list yet.

It amazes me how many people on LoT have LJs and I didn't know it!

[RStar]

Originally Posted by CoasterMatt

I only twitter if I don't take my medicine

He He, so do you get twitterpated??

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Sohrshah

It amazes me how many people on LoT have LJs and I didn't know it!

I don't

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