Hello, my name is Sloane, and I'm a techie addict

I’m spending hours on Twitter every day. It’s not for my entertainment. I’ve almost started to loathe the sight of the little tweet bird icon. Side note: What is UP with the picture that shows up when you haven’t put a personal picture up yet?? What is that thing? Two dots?? Why some weird, un-determinable image? And the color choices? Brown? Why brown? I rushed to get a picture up in order to not have that thing showing…maybe that was the idea behind it. Anyway, after looking at so many profiles a day that have that freaking image I’ve started to want to just de-twitter those people. And it’s not even their fault; it’s Twitter’s. Anyway, deep breaths.

The act of coming up with tweets that don’t sound like spam, that work to the company’s advantage, while keeping the public’s interests in mind that will hopefully cause them to tweet back and engage in meaningful twitter relationships, doesn’t seem too hard, right? Sure, I’ll agree with you on that one. Just do that several times a day and voila you’re an avid Twitter-er. Now we can move on to somethi—oh, hold that thought. Should I go look through everyone’s tweets and tweet back? Do unto others as they do unto you? Thank goodness I’m still a Twitter loser with only 54 measly followers.

(3 hours later)

I’ve successfully tweeted to, oh, probably 10 people. Reading profiles, then reading their tweets, then reading their responses to other tweets, then wondering why the hech have they not responding to MY tweets if they’ve responded to this doofus, researching their companies, thinking about what exactly I should respond to their tweets with, thinking of future tweets that I can tweet to get them more interested in my tweets, then finding more people to ‘follow’, getting acquainted with their profiles…and then this thought runs through my head:

This is only Twitter. I forgot about blogging. Facebook. LinkedIn. I have multiple social media sites to pay attention to and each one is like a needy 2 year old that won’t stop crying. Meanwhile, I’m attempting to read more about these sites and tweak my skills and suddenly I feel as if I’m living in a world of techie addicts. I start to notice how attached people are to their phones, computers, sidekicks, ipods-- the constant alerts, ringing, typing, putting down and picking back up the devices, everywhere. Then there’s the like 9 hours a day people sit in front of the computer talking on AIM, gchat, email, facebook, blogging, twitter, LinkedIn, youtube, news sites, typing away, saving files, cutting and pasting, printing, scanning, (what did people DO before computers?!). I mean, I think towards the future when I have kids, and I picture me having to tweet, text, call, email, post on their facebook wall, just to let them know dinner is ready. Scary thought, isn’t it?

Perhaps I’ve over exaggerating. Maybe I’ve let all of my involvement in learning, researching, and participating on these sites get to my head (or the depth of my soul). I’m just going to try to not feel naked if I forget my cell phone at home, or if I forget to check facebook one day a week. That being said, I’m off to go do un-technology things. Like, eat. And sleep. And engage in face-to-face conversation.