Posting and Disliking

Wondering again about how active I am on a well known social site.

I had the experience this week of someone posting a seemingly snarky response to a (at least theoretically) inspirational quote.  It wouldn't have struck me as odd but it is the third time that such a thing has happened in the last six months or so.

Reading the quote helps nothing - one feels kind of offended after one reads it and quite possibly angry (I was).  But the initial response - fire back a response - is never the correct one; you look exactly like the person who posted the quote and the web has hardly demonstrated itself to be a forum for useful discussion.  My initial response was simply to take a bit of a break from posting anything at all. 

There are two ways that I could go.  The first - more of an observation - is that this well known social site, while being useful for reconnecting friends and family, may have some of the problems that any reunion does:  we think we are seeing and talking to the people that we knew years before when in fact the years have intervened.  We change - but the patterns of relationship and our understanding of how people used to be may not have.  It comes out when we interact - we either retreat to older forms of relating, essentially picking off where we left off in high school and ignoring the fact that 20 years have intervened, or we come to the jarring realization that our friends (and ourselves) only inhabit bodies that look like us; the person has changed.

The second way is a general questioning of this entire idea of social websites and indeed of putting one's self out there at all.

Have I enjoyed the well known social website?  Yes.  It has allowed me to connect with people whom I had not seen in many years and catch up.  It has renewed some friendships in meaningful ways, which is always a good thing.  And it has allowed me to share our lives with our family in real time.

But beyond the basic contact - why am I doing this?

The same question could said about any writing I do - this blog, for example.  I have long surrendered the notion the that this blog was going to be a mechanism whereby I catapulted any writing career to something semi-self supporting.  Certainly it serves a function as a sort of online journal for myself and does keep me writing, which are both useful things and enhance my life.

But does continuing to try to significantly engage through inspirational quotes on a well known social site serve the same purpose?  I am not sure.

I have not decided what the final outcome will be - there are people who claim to get something out of what I find and for that I am grateful.  I suppose the question is does that outweigh dealing with the reality that "friend" has come to have a significantly different connotation than it used to.