VonGeekenstein » facebook

What Brought Me Back to Twitter? Comic-Con

Brian Rubin — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:09:54 +0000

So it’s no secret that…I’m just not that fond of Twitter. Rather than the order and structure of threaded conversations on other social networks, Twitter, to me, is just like one big chat room where everyone screams into the dark, hoping to be heard and replied to. I try to keep up with it a bit because I have several awesome friends who only use Twitter (why? I dunno…), but one big event brought me back to Twitter in a big way recently: Comic-Con.

I’ve not been to SDCC in two years, due to a combination of “It’s too god damned big”ness and finances (being underemployed sucks). So, in order to keep up with all of my friends’ con adventures, I found myself monitoring Twitter maybe 40-70% more a day during the con than I had been previously, and it kinda clicked. While it’s still mostly a stream of narcissistic gobbledygook (yeah, I said it), it made it a lot easier for me to follow how my friends were doing during the con.

It was during that time, especially after installing Tweetdeck, that Twitter kinda clicked. What was before just a mass of people shouting, now wherein I could at least add some order to. While lists never really helped Twitter click with me (it was just a smaller version of the stream of consciousness), but being able to arrange things in columns DID help, and now I find myself more drawn more to Twitter each day.

I’m still not wholly fond of Twitter due its lack of structure, which I seem to need. I think, however, that I can at least come to a peace with it and just use an app like Tweetdeck to keep an eye on those I care about most, while checking in on everything else now and again.

Ultimately though, I’m kinda hoping Twitter get usurped by Google Plus. It’s got the simplicity of Twitter, I feel, along with the structure of threaded conversations I so desperately prefer. In just a few weeks alone, GP has passed over twenty million users, something that took a great deal longer for either Facebook or Twitter to accomplish.

So yeah, y’all will likely see me on Twitter a good deal more often nowadays (especially with the increased time on my hands :/). What was the point of this rant? I dunno, just felt the need to say it is all. It IS my blog after all. Have a great night/day folks.

How Do You Communicate With So Much Technology?

Brian Rubin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:42:49 +0000

I talk to a lot of people on any given day, whether in person at work, or through various technological implementations. While back in my day — which was a Tuesday — there were only a couple of methods to communicate with people not in the same room with you…namely the telephone or a written (gasp!) letter, these days we have so many more options. Email, IM, text messaging, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, chat rooms and so much more. I’m finding that, for example, I’m using the actual phone part of my phone so much less and less than texting, instant messaging, email and so on.

This isn’t just a matter of convenience, but actual preference for many. While these new methods of communication allow us to reach out and talk to people easier than ever before, I’ve been thinking about what we lose in these new methods of communication. Do we just lose the nuances of actually talking to a person when using a purely textual method for communication, or is there more we’re losing? I mean besides my concerns over oversharing I’ve already talked about, there are other things I’m worrying about.

I’m concerned that, with more and more of us talking online more often, will we lose the skill of actual conversation in the process? Status updates and blog posts aren’t a conversation, and IM and email are an odd form of conversation that would sound really, really weird if emulated in real life:

Me: Hey buddy…
5 second pause
My Friend: Hey, how are you?
10 second pause
Me: I’m great, how have you been? Haven’t talked to you in ages.
15 second pause
My Friend: I’ve been good. Busy with life and work and everything, but I can’t complain…

And so on. I’m worried that we’re losing verbal communication and conversation skills along the way, which especially becomes apparent when you talk to anyone under twenty these days.

I find that, in my own case, I’ve been using texting and email more than any other form of communication. This isn’t just my choice, though. I know a lot of people who prefer to only talk that way, and don’t like talking on the actual phone.

I can understand this. On IM or email, you can take a second to think about your response before you actually respond, or if you’re feeling particularly dickish, pretend you didn’t see the communique and don’t respond at all. Being on the phone, in “real-time”, puts one more on the spot. While this doesn’t bug me at all, I’ve noticed it seems to bug more and more people lately.

So I wanted to ask all of my (five) readers what they thought, and how they communicated with people these days. Do you also find yourself primarily using textual methods of communication these days, or do you still use vocal communication a lot? Which method of communication do you prefer, and which do your friends seem to prefer? I can’t wait to discuss this with you in the comments and elsewhere.

Social Networks: Keeping Up the Conversation

Brian Rubin — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:31:32 +0000

So as you may know, I’m something of a social network whore. I’m somewhat addicted to them, because they make it easy to have conversations (or snippets thereof) with many of my closest friends. However, the more I’ve used them, the more I noticed my habits have changed in their use, and I’ve developed a preference. Whereas once I used to be on Twitter most of the time, now I’m on Facebook much more often. Why is that? Well, I’ll tell you…

I’m focusing on Facebook and Twitter because, let’s face it, they’re the two big players. While Twitter is much more simplistic and easier to deal with, Facebook (at the cost of some privacy) has more features and, at times, more complications. However, I have found that it’s easier to have a conversation on Facebook than it is on Twitter, and also easier to keep up with what my friends are doing. Why? The main thing, I think, that makes Facebook easier to deal with is threaded conversations (yes, I know Plurk has this, but I’m not a fan of Plurk’s horizontal nature…yes, I’m weird…).

See, I’m blessed with lots of people on Twitter, people who I want to follow. However, since Twitter seems to move by at the speed of a rushing torrent, it makes it more difficult — for me, at least — to keep up with folks. Even the advent of lists only helped a little bit. Sure, they have mentions, which lets you see who replied to you and have a conversation that way, but this seems inelegant and a tad chaotic. By keeping things in threads, Facebook helps keep conversations much, much more organized.

Another issue I have with Twitter is the lack of notifications. To keep up with conversations, either yours or others, you have to constantly monitor the stream, which takes focus away from other things. Facebook does a much better job here with email alerts of replies and so on, making it easy to do other things then come back to the conversation when needed.

Maybe this is the crux of the matter here. With Facebook, I can pop in, check on people, leave messages, go do other things, come back and reply to those messages and so on. With Twitter, if one wants to be truly connected to folks, one has to constantly monitor it, unless you want to lose hours worth of tweets and conversations in the ether. I’d rather spend that energy elsewhere.

So, for me at least, I think Facebook is a much better conversational tool than Twitter, though I know folks who either prefer Twitter or use it exclusively…sadly, I don’t talk to them as much. What do you think about all of this? Am I way wrong? Why do you prefer one social network to another, or do you use both equally? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading.

Geeky Burnout

Brian Rubin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:58:15 +0000

We’ve all been there, I’m sure. We get a new game, a new DVD, a new book series, find a new website, what have you, and we get sucked into it, wholly and fully. For a while, we’re totally enamored with this thing, whether it’s a new TV series, a funny website, or a book series. Eventually, however, we all get to a point where we start feeling less enamored with this new thing, this new obsession, so we take one of many different paths. We take a break from it and return later, quit from it outright, or plow through the burnout.

When you’re a geek, you have a lot of passions and obsessions, from TV shows to websites to games and everything else in between. However, we only have so much attention to go around…some less than others, in my case. This is especially true when new things come into play to vie for our attention.

In my own case, I’m suffering from multiple levels of burnout at the moment. The first one is social networking, such as Twitter and Facebook. For a while, I was on these services non-stop, chatting with my friends and wasting time. I’d get SMS updates when friends made new posts and reply to nearly every one. Nowadays, I only dip my toe in the water every so often, and the SMS alerts have been turned off, because it became overwhelming.

I’m also burned out with other things, like reading, sadly. I’m usually a pretty voracious reader, constantly reading books at home or in my iPhone using various apps. Sadly in the last few months, the idea of reading a book has filled me with some dread, so I’ve taken a break from reading, for the most part (at least until the next Dresden Files book comes out next month). Heck, a couple of years ago, I was so burnt out on video games I didn’t play any for nearly two years, but thankfully I slowly got back into them.

What about you? Is there anything you’re burnt out on, geek-wise? I’d love to hear your comments on what you’re currently or previously have been burnt out on, and how you managed to get through it, if at all. With so many forms of entertainment vying for our attention, I’m sure we all have plenty of burnout stories to share, and I look forward to reading yours. Thanks for reading.