Hi, I am a real person!

I miss my friends.  I have had a lot of "people I know" in my life, but I also had a dozen really awesome friends.  Over the past few years (mostly in the last 2 or 3) I have lost my friends to technology.

Five, six years ago, we would hang out on a porch drinking beer and telling stories.  Now, it seems the only contact I have with my friends is on either Myspace, Facebook or the gazillion other sites they tried to invite me to (Friendster, Twitter, etc).

I was a myspace whore for a while. I joined years ago (way before the annoying ads that give you seizures or the days that you go into your myspace inbox only to find 13 emails from chicks who have their ass in a thong as a photo and their email is a cookie-cutter text that basically says "come to my private page to see me without clothes").  I was a myspace whore who spent hours upon hours on it.  I even became one of those annoying myspace friends who would post bulletins 12 times a day and would reply to every comment with a comment and would add every band as a friend just so I can put "Jason Mraz" or "50 Cent" as my top 3 friends as if I am "tight like that" with them.

Over the past couple of years I noticed a trend.  Many of my friends who used to contact me via my regular email, have abandoned that idea to go to this world where people send you messages via myspace or facebook.  To me, that was annoying as hell.  For starters, these sites have a crappy inbox system, but I also don't log on daily to check them.  So invites to a basketball game because a buddy had an extra ticket, now goes unanswered because it didn't go to my gmail.  

I also lost my friends because they all went into this myspace, facebook world where some have to play these games, and surverys and crap like that.  "Oh, so and so has sent you a would-you-fuck-me-if-we-werent-friends survey along with a virtual shot drink of foreskin juice and vodka" and suddenly, if I don't respond or accept, I am not cool or I get a snark comment.

This does not apply to all my friends, but has definitely become a trend among some.  So today I took a time machine and decided to go back 5 years and get people to get intouch with me via email.  I don't want mass-emails like I got on myspace about "come check out my new photo of me farting on my roomate" .  I want personalized messages.  I feel like I lost connection with some friends due to the fact that these "social network sites" created this comfort level where you can send a message to all 415 friends on your list instead of individuals.  Suddenly, my friends have become telemarketing spammers who tell me about their weekend along with 400 other people.  What's the point?

So today I went ahead and deleted my Myspace and my Facebook account.  Done. Gone. Dead.

If anyone wants to get a hold of me, they should have my email or my cell.  If they don't, I probably didn't see you as worthy enough.  To be honest, when I closed my myspace account, I had 184 friends.  184.  I looked at the most recent contacts on my gmail of people I email regularly and it generated eight names.   EIGHT!   That means, I had over 170 people on myspace that I never talk to and never needed.  

Call me  a jerk, or call me the beginner of a revolution against social networking.  I just see it as trimming out the fat (or cutting out the weak players from the team).  Those who have my number or gmail, can get in touch with me next time they need me.  Otherwise, let them forever be happy with their 400 friends and their "Funniest Video I ever seen" bulletins.

peace