Social Media Compliments and Complaints

After getting a Facebook account, I thought that it would be the only social media that I would use.  After MySpace faded into oblivion (does it even exist anymore?), Facebook was the end all be all for connecting with people.  It was a great way to keep in touch with friends and family living in different parts of the country and sometimes world.  With picture updates, you got to go on vacations vicariously with them.  Then, shit got weird.

Maybe weird isn't the right word, but it has gotten to the point where it is mostly filled with personal problems and drama.  It's like high school for the twenty first century.  For the longest time, Facebook was fun because people's statuses were for the most part entertaining to read and comment on.  Then you get people typing up statuses fishing for sympathy or wanting to get tons of comments.  I'm not saying that I will stop using Facebook or delete a ton of people (again), it's just not as great as I thought it once was.  It's all the tweeking and tinkering that they do to improve the site.  Yes, some things have made it better and easier to work with and see what is going on.  But there are times when these improvements don't do jack and we are all left wondering what the point of it was. 

I know it isn't any better, but Twitter has come around and it just seems so much more simple and fun that Facebook.  The best thing that it has going for it is the one hundred and forty character limit.  You only have a little bit of space to air out dirty laundry or personal drama.  It's great.  You don't find yourself scrolling through an album of two hundred pictures of a trip that a friend took.  A tweet consists of one picture unless they feel like tweeting two hundred times, which is possible I suppose.  I have gotten to a point where Twitter is the first thing I check these days and not Facebook.

These social media sites fine, but they never replace talking with friends face to face.  How much better is it to go out and grab a beer with a friend than it is to chat with them online?  You hear their laughter, see their reactions to stories about what is going on in your life, and can know that the conversation is engaging.  Catching up with friends in person leaves you feeling reconnected.  Ending a conversation online is just another moment on the internet.