I've seen a lot of friends, er, people, get into doing these 30 Day Challenge things with the pictures and the facebook and whatnot. I was just thinking: if it were two, even one, year ago, I'd probably be right there with them doing it.
I thought about it earlier. Today, I could never actually pull it off. The 30 Day Challenge as it stands requires you to have pictures of favorite memories, close friends, things that recently changed your life...and I don't really have any of these things, much less pictures of them. That's something I've noticed for a long time, actually, the no pictures thing, and I've innately ranted about that enough. I don't need to do it here without sounding like a total prick.
The thing I will rant on is about facebook communication in general, or rather, the whole internet. My biggest problem with it as of late is that people have the option to "turn off" conversations. It's really not the case that I am anti-social. I'm not, at least not on facebook. I strike up conversations all the time. When it's not in chat, it's in a message, and that's where the problem really starts. The most notable cases occur with someone who was my best friend for years and another who I've pretty much been in love with for going on half of my life now. The scenario is this: I message them, they message back. If we're lucky we get out of the normal "hey what's up" portion of the conversation before I just stop getting messages back.
I realize this is actually standard fare for the internet, and it's also one of the great things about it. If you don't particularly feel like talking to someone, or you just hate them, then you don't have to talk to them. Which is great, only if you hated them you wouldn't have added them in the first place, and if you liked them you'd be at least a tiny bit interested in what they have to say. Do I always follow these rules? No, but at the same time I am very rarely put into a situation where this logic applies...since no one approaches me for a conversation.
I quite simply think it's incredibly rude to just abruptly stop a conversation in progress, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. If this were in-person, it's the equivalent of turning around and walking away without saying a word, or just sitting there in front of the person and being silent. At least tell me if you're not going to be continuing the conversation. Of course, one of the great things about the internet is that conversations can be carried out across a few days or weeks, and can be taken at a leisurely pace. A message here when you're on checking your status or looking at an update or new post or whatever you're doing when you have time for it. I understand there are busy people out there, but if you're on doing something out of the above list, I don't get why you can't continue a personal conversation. Most of the time responses don't require pages and pages of output, and if they do, chances are a longer wait time is expected. "That's cool" in those cases, is better than nothing, in my opinion, it at least lets me know you're aware of the idea I put forward, and I can expand and add anything else I've come up with in the interim.
But this isn't an entry about facebook ettiquette. Or is it? Admittedly, I have some major issues right now sorting out what I wanted this entry to be. I think it'd be better to end it here, come up with a different title later, and cover the other subject in another entry later. Probably a good idea.
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