Wednesday, May 2, 2012

an ode to blogging and ranting.

Facebook vs. Blogging

I've been thinking a lot about this lately.  Remember when we all blogged?  And everyone we knew was blogging?  And now most of those friend's blogs are apologies for not blogging?

I'm not bringing guilt into this, I know my posts are not as prolific, especially on the family blog.  I've just been thinking of the immediate gratification factor of FB.  If I have some awesome pictures, I kind of want to post it there first because then I'll get a a kajillion of the big reason why we blog - comments.  Oh, comments.  DELICIOUS.  My heart skips a beat when I see one in my inbox.  Even if it's spam telling me about purses I still feel slightly lighter.

And it's so much easier to comment on FB - again, no guilt here, I'm a crummy commenter.  When I check blogs it's usually on my phone where commenting would be a total pain.  So I make a mental note to do it later... then mostly forget.  But it's so easy to do it on FB that even I can manage to type something on my little screen, or at least hit the "like" button.

But there is a dark side of easy commenting... oh yes.  Husband was just noting that FB is like a big gallery of people's bad life choices and I heartily agree.  I see a former student gushing about a Nickelback concert and all I want to do is scream in all-caps.  That new tattoo the random friend complains about that hurts soooo bad?  Restraining my fingers from typing "Pain??  Just wait until you want to take it OFF!"  gives me hand cramps (can't take credit for that one, the husband thought of it).  And the bad spelling.... and superfluous apostrophes....  OH THE HUMANITY, WHY OH WHY WITH THE SUPERFLUOUS APOSTROPHES?!?!?!

*ahem*

And then there is the other side - if you post something about your child ACTUALLY EATING A CARROT (sorry, it's an all-caps kind of day) someone can and will post "o rly?  i won't let my dd touch anything but organic produce lol!  maybe its cuz you didn't bf him."  You know what I mean.  And then it takes all my brains to not post anything back.  And then politics... oh heavens.  Regardless, I think all this holding-my-snark-in is going to give me a hernia.

Because no matter how silly I think it is when a healthy new mom takes 3 months off coming to church once the baby arrives (I went to a ward party the day I was released from the hospital with WonderGirl) - someone has a really valid reason to do the exact opposite of me.  All the strong feelings my friends have about vaccines, child-rearing, and getting a gym membership - life is just better with me listening and learning from them and keeping my trap shut.  I hear more that way, anyway.  It's nice to live with less conflict, even though conflict has never been easier to start, thank you online forums.

What was my point again?  Oh yes, I love blogging.  I kind of want to smooch it.

OH - and one last thing - so a friend and I have been given the task of teaching a class at a ladies church thing Saturday on how to use Pinterest and Facebook.  It's kind a spectacular waste of an hour, since almost everyone at church uses both, so anyone have any ideas on what else I can add besides a 30-second tutorial on how to log on and log off?

10 comments:

Mara said...

Last month the RS activity in my ward was about giving tips to people on how to use Facebook and Pintrest as a tool to share the gospel. I cound't make it so I dont know how the class went. But it's an idea =)

Cath said...

Teach them Pinterest manners (see my recent pin...) like pinning from the source. Also, how to unfollow people on Pinterest and FB. And um, maybe using FB lists?

M said...

It's dopamine. As in "dope." We have reward receptors in our brains, and the feedback we get on FB (and in comments) lights up that sector of our brain and releases feel-good dopamine. Driving us to post more--especially on sites with instant gratification, like FB, where someone is ALWAYS on and ready to "Like"--so that we get more feedback and more dope. Literally addictive.

Mara said...

PS: I started blogging a year and a half ago and I love. Although we all love comments the main reason I blog is because I found out is the best way for me to keep a journal so that's why it's private now and one has to register to be able to read my posts.I didn't want to expose too much info about our lives to anyone out there.

Anonymous said...

“It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.”
― Maurice Switzer

Jane said...

I agree with you. I love to blog - though I don't get to it as often as I think about it - and FB kind of annoys me. So I don't update my page and rarely look at anyone else's. I use it to play Mafia Wars and...that's about it.
I'm behind the ball and don't know a thing about Pinterest so there you go.

Jane said...

Though I don't have the trouble with FB eating my comments like blogspot seems to be doing.

Mary said...

Might be helpful to offer tips on maximizing privacy on fb, which is not an easy task but sooooo important I think.

jennaroo said...

Um...yeah...agreeing to teach Facebook seemed like a good idea at the time.

Teresa said...

I know what you mean. There are pros and cons to both. I think Blogging > Facebook, because Facebook is so impersonal. I love how you can get to know people through blogs because they are more honest in there than to their real life friends who might be reading. I am always censoring my facebook updates. I love Mary's idea of how to maximize privacy and also I would say the importance of editing pictures in case a possible employer ever saw your facebook and limiting the amount of personal information one puts online for safety reasons. As for Pinterest...you could talk about how you can use it to organize things like ideas for decorating your bedroom, then ideas for a bathroom, etc. and such.

HEAR YE. I need to document the fact that I ran 3 miles and didn't feel like death.  So just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I did...