The New Kid...

Do you think I'm sexy? No? Adorable? No. Cute? Please say I'm cute. No? Okay, well I'll get to writing then.

So I'm the new guy here at the fabulous Dork Tower. I gotta admit, I thought writing for someone else's blog was a bit intimidating. I have a blog of my own (which I won't pimp right now, but maybe someday in the far off future), but I haven't updated it in a while. It might as well be a junkyard where I dump bullshit that makes no sense to anyone but me (read the post about how I had an apocalyptic vision a few years ago. You'll love it, I swear.).

And I guess that's what this first post shall be about: blogs, and in a way how I've come to be a part of this blog and my own blog.

I was a little late to the whole "social networking" movement that seemed to sprout up after sites like Myspace became "the shit". Everyone I talked to kept telling me "Get a Myspace! It's incredible!", and every time I would say "I am NEVER going to get one of those. I may be the last person on earth who doesn't have one, and I STILL wouldn't get one." Cut to five years later, and not only have I had a Myspace page (now deleted due to me not wanting to keep it open), but I have a Facebook page...and of course I now have two blogs I post on. So the whole point of rebelling against social networking was really moot. Even the most anti-social people I know have Myspace pages and Facebook pages. That to me is equal parts amazing and shocking. Amazing because these sites have, in a weird way, made people more social...and shocking because, in a weird way, they've made people more social. To me, being social was always about opening yourself up a bit. Some open up more than others, but in general that's what I thought of as "being social". For a long time, I rebelled against that too. My family has always been a fairly private one, and that has always extended to me. I was a shy, awkward guy most of my life, and I swore to be that same shy, awkward guy for the rest of my life.

Of course, once I succumbed to the social network movement, I had to say goodbye to that guy for the most part. You can't join social networking sites and blogs and NOT be social (although judging by some peoples Myspace/Facebook/Blog sites, I guess people are bucking the trend, so...). I had to finally give up living in a shell and open up a bit, and without those sites, I think it's possible that this never would have happened.

And sometimes, I wish it wouldn't have happened. Not necessarily for me, but for others. Once you let people see inside of you, they, like most humans, tend to try and pick you apart. They try to figure you out. And like most things, what they find can be distorted and skewed. I've seen lots of good come from social networking, but also a lot of bad. It's almost scary just how much these simple sites can do in real life.

But in the end, I think the good can outweigh the bad most of the time. I don't think social networking should be condemned, because even if it doesn't involve direct contact with human beings, it can allow you to be, in a strange way, more human.


Thanks for reading.