Social Bankruptcy?
Posted on April 18, 2008
6 Comments
Many people have heard of (or used) the phrase “E-Mail Bankruptcy” which was, I believe, first coined by Lawrence Lessig (Call it the Dead E-Mail Office). From the cited article:
In a script-driven note sent out last week, Lessig wrote: “Dear person who sent me a yet-unanswered e-mail, I apologize, but I am declaring e-mail bankruptcy.”
He went on to note that he had spent 80 hours the prior week sorting through unanswered e-mail built up since January 2002, and had determined that “without extraordinary effort” he would simply never be able to respond to these messages.
I’ve been close to that point a few times, but so far have managed to reel back in the E-Mail stacks and keep the inbox at zero or darned close. Yay me.
A Different Sort of Bankruptcy
However, social media is starting to have me pondering the notion of declaring “Social Bankruptcy” instead. Allow me to share some “for instances.”
While I like it that Last.FM keeps track of music I’ve listened and then helps me meet other folks and discover other music, only using players that can support that automatically is pain in the butt (check out Pandora FM if you’re also a Pandora user!). I actually got a bit anxious yesterday because my Grooveshark Lite music wasn’t being logged.
That’s not healthy, is it? That was the trigger for this article as I began to consider the other social stuff I’m into.
I’ve already mostly bailed out of the Instant Messaging world. I’ll still pop up Meebo on the occasional evening to keep in touch with friends, but it was proving to be way to distracting to have going at work or when at home trying to be productive. Not only from folks pinging me but also my pinging others (oh yeah, I’ll share the blame!).
Now I only keep up a Google Talk client with co-workers and a small number of “trusted” folks and business partners. That’s dramatically cut back disruptions. Not that I don’t sometimes miss those old IM buddies…
Facebook? Yeah, it can be neat. I haven’t logged in at least a month — and it was probably a month before that for the previous log in. Too many pokes, prods, wall scrawls and other goofy add-ons to try and keep up with.
How about Twitter? Sure, I have fun with it and I love the BeTwittered and twhirl clients, but do I really need the disruptions? I’ve already compared it to the CB radio scene of the 70’s and I’m still feeling that way. There’s some great stuff in twitter — both information and often downright hilarious. But man… sure have to do a lot of sifting.
Some would argue that FriendFeed can help minimize and corral a lot of this social stuff. Well, sure it can — if all your social contacts join it. Without them joining you’re reduced to going the imaginary friend route. Do I really want to make all those imaginary friends? Turns out, in hindsight that the answer is, “Nope.”
Small tangent: I’d argue that Socialthing does a much better job of aggregating all the “streams” from social thingies — or at least doesn’t take nearly as much effort and registrations. Web only and having to manually refresh is another issue though… (I’ve touched on the FriendFeed and Socialthing comparison in the past in more detail)
Digg, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Pownce, Jaiku and the list just keeps growing.
Arghh!
I could go on and on… but I imagine you get the point. Somehow, I need to pick a handful to maintain and let the rest go. Lower the pressure to keep current. Relax a bit. Figure out what I can handle without it becoming too much like work.
Am I alone in feeling overwhelmed? It seems so easy to just to bail on the whole scene. That also seems too much like throwing the baby out with the bath water. There is still some value in this social arena, right?
Or am I just obsessing again?
Tags: social, social-aggregation, social-software
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6 Responses to “Social Bankruptcy?”
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I agree. One of the things I try to do is limit my circle of friends on those sites. With twitter, only subscribe to 5 or 6 people’s threads. Don’t allow shouts from non-friends on DIGG. Stuff like that seams to help. I keep reading articles about how constant multi-tasking makes you dumber. Well, that sort of applies here. Constantly checking email, twitter, DIGG, Google Reader, etc. Can make me less productive for sure.
Great Post.
@nathan - thanks for the thoughts. I’m doing more or less the same thing, but a bit differently.
Some networks I’m just dropping out of. I’m “self-regulating” how often I hit Google Reader and pretty much ignoring it during the working day (ok, well I check over lunch…).
But only following 5 or 6 in Twitter? Nope! I think it gets more interesting with more variety. That being said, I *am* cutting back on folks who are overly “verbose.” And if I’m busy, I kill the twitter client to cut out the distraction.
Still pondering the whole thing though… not ready for full bankruptcy but definitely evaluating all the distractions one by one.
I’ve scaled WAY back as well. Last time I cut back I cancelled accounts as well. Dropped them. Figuring if I were on them people could rightly assume I would check them. I’m on myspace? Must be going to log in… send a myspace shout out. So… killed it. Killed my space, ugh, there were/are more.
Slowly I’ve resigned up to some of them… I don’t go though. they just sit there like abandoned washing machines in my trailer’s front yard (I don’t live in a trailer; nor do I have washing machines in the front yard.)
So yeah. I’m socialed out. I like twitter for the phone part. I like it for quick passed note in school feel. I was never part of the CB scene. I was far too young back then. *grin* And RE: twitter, yeah. Some ppl just tweet too much and scroll everybody else off the page. I don’t tend to keep those sorts.
Though I am ‘only’ 31, I sometimes think back to times where I only used a computer to play Leasure Suit Larry…:)
Nowadays, communication with computers is taking up way too much time for everyone. I sometimes simply delete one or two days of e-mail (of course not at work :D), people will contact me again or by phone if it was really important…
@Rich - too young for CB scene, eh? Don’t make me print your birth date here…
I guess I can say I never created a MySpace, for what that’s worth. But yeah, closing or deleting the unused or undesired options seems like a good idea. If I could figure out, for sure, which those will be.
@Mark - I miss the early Leisure Suit Larry games
Boy, those were fun. I guess they were even somewhat social as I always had a friend or two coming over to join in for solving the puzzles…