On the Noise in Social Media

A lot of people say the Internet is a godsend for introverts and I think I have to say that I share similar opinion. What's interesting was, I had always thought that since the Internet allows us introverts to talk easier and considerably a lot more than what we usually do in person, that makes introverts become extroverts when online.

But I found out that that's not the case.

I read an interesting article from Psychology Today about introverts online. This is what the writer (who is an introvert) said: 

I blog, I tweet, I FB. I'm all over the place. But like in the offline world, I have my limits. 

By the end of a workday, FB voices start giving me the same kind of tiredhead I get at a party or after a stretch of face-to-face social engagements. Sometimes I find myself getting annoyed when people comment on my status lines, which is silly. If you're going to be an exhibitionist, you have to expect people to look.

An introvert offline is an introvert online. I don't accept friend requests from everyone on FB (so please don't friend me--though feel free to join me onTwitter ). I take a while to warm to new virtual friends. I hide people who bore me. Sometimes I want Twitter to just shut the hell up. And I prefer not to post on my blogs unless I have something to say. 

So, introvert offline, is introvert online. Nothing changes.

And that is pretty much what I'm feeling right now about the social media out there.

I'm never really into Facebook. I find it too crowded.  I mostly use it only to keep in touch with my close friends. Only close friends, yet, of course, it fails successfully. There are times I kind of lose myself and start typing anything I want to there, mostly unimportant things, and at the end of the day I mentally knock myself on the head, or simply wonder, what would be the best way to make use of this thing because what you've been doing is anything but useful, Self. I'm learning and will keep on learning for this one. 

Twitter, is another story. I rarely check my Twitter these days. For the past month, I only check my Twitter twice a week, and even that felt too much. I couldn't stay there for longer than 15 minutes, before the noise starts getting in to my nerve and I have this urge to immediately shut it down and runaway.

It's still addictive as usual. If I force myself to stay another click, most likely I'd stay there for another 15 - 20 minutes. There's always something interesting to see, inviting links to click, or simply curiosity over not-so-important-but-curiosity-is-curiosity things. 

I don't want to abandon Twitter because I realize that it's still an important source of information. I just need to find the way how to keep up with the (sometimes annoying) noise. 

What I did was I re-activate my Google Reader. It has been neglected for a couple of months because it's too crowded but I managed to trimmed it down to only subscription of blogs. No more news portals. I keep up with the latest news by following the news portals' on twitter, all grouped in my News column in TweetDeck.

In this case, TweetDeck is a lot of help. Whenever I feel I need to check on the news (or something else like the National Geography or Discovery Channel which I put in the "Interesting Stuff" column__yeah I know the name is far from creative), I can directly focus my attention to the relevant column. I don't have to be distracted by the noise in the timeline.

And honestly speaking, I rarely check my timeline lately. Well, there will always be interesting stuffs and information there but sometimes it's just too noisy, and really, most of the times, the information is not that important.  There is also the option of cleaning up my following list, which I've been planning to do actually. But it will take a certain amount of time and energy. Thinking of drowning into that noisy stream again alone has drained me. So in the mean time, I guess this would be the best way. 


Twitter for news updates, and Google Reader for my light readings.


And I'm a happy introvert :)




-7.20 pm, while trying to write something else, and as usual, I came up with something else-

Me and the so called digital habit

Okay, I figured that this 2.0 era has started getting in to me.





I have a feeling that lately everything is 2.0. You don’t just call people or send them SMS. You mention them in twitter to make sure they receive your message. You leave a post on their FB wall, because sometimes, people check their FB more often than they check their message box.


And of course, you don’t just (or perhaps you no longer) write in your diary or personal journal. You blog.
People seldom joke about if only they can undo the mistake they’ve made. If only life is as simple as that. No regrets needed. Just one click and everything will be just fine.


Believe it or not, the thought crossed my mind several time. Unconsciously, every time I made a mistake, there’s this voice saying to me: okay, let’s just undo whatever it is that you have done and start all over again. Am not schizophrenic or anything, but I guess that’s what happen when you spend almost half of your waking hour using computer.





I spend about 7 hours of my time in front of the computer every day. So I guess it’s not really surprising isn’t it when whatever you do with the computer finally becomes not only a habit, but also affect your mind, the way you see things, the way you do things in real life.


The latest symptom I had was when I was writing on my personal journal. Yes, I keep a journal. Not a diary because they say diary is for girls. Since I’m an adult (*cough), I think personal journal would be the best to keep.


Anyway, at that time I realized that I kept thinking of clicking the save button every now and then. I was in the middle of moving my pen on the paper when this thought crossed my mind: Okay, let’s just click the save button before something happen and you loose this one and a half pages of writing. Of course I wasn’t really clear what it was nagging in the back of my mind at the first time. But after two or three times, I started to feel annoyed by this familiar feeling. After almost an hour of writing, I’d finally realized that it’s exactly the same feeling I have whenever I’m working on a work documents. There’s this subtle urgency to keep clicking the save button every 15 minutes (even though I have actually set the automatic save to 1 minute), or every time I have completed one paragraph.


Of course, such unconscious feeling should be harmless. I mean, compared to our familiarity with the existence of the undo button? Living with a mindset that you can always undo your actions (while actually you can’t) would be dangerous.


It’s harmless, but nonetheless unpleasant.


I tend to build this imaginary wall between the 2.0 world and the ‘ancient’ world, represented by everything not digital, including writing in paper personal journal, using pen. The 2.0 world has its own characteristics, and one of the most improved aspect is time-related. Speed, real-time, all unlimited.


While in the' ancient' way of living, patience is the most explored aspect. You wait for things to happen. You wait for the postage to deliver your mail. You write patiently, pages per pages. And yes, you have to write carefully, if you want your sheet to remain neat and clean. Erasing will be a hard work. And cause some irreparable damage: torn paper, dirty sheet, dirty fingers, etc.


Hence, my annoyance of this mixed up feeling.


It’s a bit annoying when you try to take yourself out from the high-tech world for a moment and retreat to the time when everything is simpler and slower, you find yourself disturbed by this nagging urgency that actually belong to the 2.0 world. It feels, so, uhm, otherworldly, you know…

My Not So Secret Identity

What is in a name?

I could just continue the cliché with another cliché to answer, that is: a lot or nothing at all.
But let me share the small confusion I’ve been experiencing in digital world.


I had never really thought about it before. My first encounter with the digital world had been on creating email, and thinking about the email address had not been something important (at least ideologically and professionally) back then. Since my real name has been in use, I ended up with an email address that I don’t want to use now (yes, the email account had been abandoned for years, and yes, the ‘name problem’ had played an important role in it).


Years later after creating the email, my conscious started to knocking on my brain and asked me to think about how to solve the problem. Well, it became a problem when I was about to finish my college and preparing to join the working force, becoming one of those smart, educated, sober, no-weird-ideas- professionals. Having written a number of applications letters and crafted a CV for couples of time, I started to realize that my email address might become a problem. How would I enter the professional world with an email address that sounds like those Japanese cartoon characters?


So I signed up for another email account, hoping that I would be able to make myself sounds professional this time by having my real name as my email address. It didn’t work. Simply because I have this too common name. There are probably thousands of people in Indonesia – not to mention in other parts of the world – having the same name. And I suspected at least half of them had already signed up for an email account with that name. And surely some of them had failed, just like me.
I learned, ever since, to take the matter more seriously.
It should not be a big deal probably, if only the company I am working for does not embrace the digital world so fully. But it does. And I am actually very glad, as it gives me tons of opportunities and chances to learn, much more than I can get from other company. But along with the huge chances and opportunities, came the rules and regulations.


Understanding too well of the gaps and weaknesses in the digital spheres that might lead us to trouble, our office strongly recommends us to use our real identity to engage in the digital world. We are required to be honest and reveal our true identity when engaging in any online activities. That includes the company we’re working for, and the client we’re working on (if we are doing a certain campaign using our social networking accounts).


As far as I know, using your real, full name is the simplest yet important way to indicate your honesty and professionalism. People will easily recognize you from your real name. And they will at once understand that you’re not some pseudo personalities who cannot make up your mind of what to do and what to be in the digital spheres. I completely have no objection in using my real name in any of my online presence. The problem is I can’t. Because my name has already been taken. Years ago, I suppose.


I cannot use my full name, as it will violate the unwritten rule in the digital world that your id should be easy enough to pronounce, and short enough to remember. And no, I cannot use my initials because it sounds just impossible. I have to create a user id that is not my name, but somehow still resembles my name so that people will automatically relate the name to me, and most important is, sounds professional.


I succeeded in some accounts, where my name had not so much been taken by everybody else, so I can still have my real name as a user id, with little variations of punctuation mark as far as the accounts allowed them to. In other accounts, however, I have to be satisfied with other names that don’t even close to my name.


You can argue that there might be a creativity issue there. But when your name is a very common one like me, I am sure you know what I mean. Even creativity doesn’t seem to be working. At the end of the day, I would just have to be satisfied with some words, other than, and not even close to my name, to be my user id. Just like the one I have now.


I don’t want to be secretive. I am not a fan of the pseudo personalities scattered in the digital spheres. I know the limit of private and public in it very well, that is, nothing actually private there, even in your own blog. So I know exactly what to say and what not to say to stay safe and healthy in the digital spheres. I have no interest of sounding mysterious. I want to be honest and reveal my true identity. Only I cannot do it with my real name.


Now does it make any sense at all?