I get a knot in my gut wherever someone wants me to see their new website. I’m sorry. I’m a bitch. MAYBE. Or too critical. Definitely. Or maybe my real gift in life is tearing apart someone else’s something. “Born to the purple” a friend used to say. I guess I am “born to the red pen”.
A different friend whom I love but often don’t like recently “started a business”. It is much like her previous business. A site dedicated to “love and light” and the sharing the harmonic bliss. She is loving and talented. Addicted to the deceptive “we” used often on websites to imply a larger staff than simply me. myself and I. Addicted to what I call compulsive sharing evidenced by the Facebook relay race of sharing images, photos and news events. It reminds me of being in high school. Watching the race to be among the first to obtain the newest fashion item. Rugby Shirts. Velour. Those suede clogs. I am dating myself.
I hate that about Facebook. For years I avoided sharing anything. I avoiding liking. I hadn’t learned the language.
Then about four years ago, about the time I realized I was truly alone and essentially friendless, I found myself back on the ‘book. A like here, a share there. My fluency increased. My annual “like” stats went into the hundreds. Suddenly my feed looked like a newspaper. An interesting one. It was as though all the news in the world mirrored my interests. Which of course it did. It was MY world.
So here I am. Asked to “check out” the new site, the new business, the “revolution”. Asked to see yet another site, web page, Facebook page that seeks to generate life changing discussions by simply sharing a quant saying laid over an illustrative photo. Usually from someone else.
This does not get my conversation rocks off. So do I say something? Or not? These are two sites on both Facebook and the web that simply fall flat because they seek others to pump life into the body. You can’t talk about taking risks and then comfortably share someone else’s words. Well actually you can. But you will keep begging for those extra few likes if you do. And in this world of “views” and “likes” it is going to take more than the word “revolution” to create one. It is going to take a huge leap. Of faith. Of stupidity. Or simply of sharing to get yourself out there and noticed.
The blogs I follow, and the webpages I go back to often are those where I actually witness some human interaction. Even when it is only between the writer and the page. Some actual commentary with or about something that awakens my old brain cells from their dorito and mini pizza funk.
I periodically go check these “new” and recycled sites out. Painfully realize that it is too boring for words and leave. Usually without a like to indicate my presence. Chickenshit. I don’t want to be pulled in again. I fear that inevitable question “so did you see my page…what did you think?” Is is almost as bad as “did you see my childhood photo?”
I know you want me to say it’s radical, it’s revolutionary and that it is NEW.
It isn’t. It’s old. It’s recycled. And it’s safe.
And for god’s sake -admit it is only one person and stop saying WE.
We here at Under the Rock, we would prefer it that way.
under the rock 