Net-Overworked

When it came to market, I was among the first in line for the IPOD.  I had one of the early models, the one that looked like a space-age tic-tac dispenser.  I later traded up to the Nano, which I rarely mentioned without thinking of Robin Williams, prompting the duplication pronunciation as in, Nano-Nano.  My I-touch came soon after my son received one.  Two years later, I’ve yet to meet a cooler gadget.  Mine goes with me everywhere. 

In all the time I’ve “podded”, I’d never downloaded a podcast, but that was before I ran out of treadmill diversions.  Music doesn’t do it for me.  Music provides a soundtrack.  Rather than taking me to another place, it helps me focus on the task at hand.  I don’t want to focus on the treadmill. 

Television was an option for a while.  Several years ago, I watched an entire season of American Idol on the treadmill.  Since then though, I’ve moved it.  I’ve taken over the Living Room, turning it into a Game/Workout room.  It’s not carpeted, inviting every little noise to travel through a stoned foyer, down a similarly bare hallway, to the door of my son’s bedroom, and that’s a problem.  Sometimes I use the treadmill before work.  Waking my son at 4:30 AM would only mean trouble for us both.

After hearing someone on television discuss their favorite, a podcast seemed a viable solution; not to mention a reason to spend another hour or so poking around in I-tunes, which is for me, similar to shoe shopping in that I could do it until I run out of money or someone I’m related to shouts “Mom!”.

It took a few minutes to get acclimated, but after perusing “Staff Picks”, and “New and Noteworthy”, I chose a handful of podcasts to audition.  I clicked on each icon, downloaded the latest entry, and it wasn’t long before I began to notice a pattern.  Many podcasts are supported by websites, and those websites encourage participation in a social network of like-minded listeners.

Really?

Later that day, a friend sent me a link to a site dealing with Kabbalah.  I know two things about Kabbalah.  I know followers wear a cool, little, red, string bracelet, and I know Madonna is one.

You might say I’m a student of religion.  I’ve studied and/or read the text of many religions, from Daoism, to Mormonism, to good old Southern Baptist theology.  I even read “Dianetics” and, afterward, sent an email requesting information on becoming a Christian Scientist.  I got no response.  I never decided if that was a good thing or a bad thing…

I visited the site my friend suggested, and submitted the information required for a fourteen-day, free trial.  Almost immediately came the email suggesting I join their social network for those new to Kabbalah.     

Really?

Open Salon, too, has become something of a social network.  The fact is, you can post all you want, but if you don’t take the time to read other’s posts, add them to your friend’s list, and message them when you add another post, your post probably won’t get read.

I joined Facebook.  We all did, didn’t we?  I mean, even if you didn’t join to catch up with old friends, or to cheat with old friends, or even just to lurk on old friends’ walls to live vicariously much as you did in high school, you joined to monitor your kid’s activity, right?

Facebook is THE social network of all social networks.  All my “friends” are there.  I put “friends” in parentheses because I have “friended” people I have never met or even conversed with, in any media, at any time, anywhere.  These are people my “real” friends have suggested I “friend”.  So, I did.

The fact is, I feel pressured.  When a “friend” suggests a “friend”, I feel pressure to friend.  When I post on Open Salon, I feel pressured to read.  I am 4 days into my free, fourteen-day trial of Kabbalah Online and I feel pressured to rush through the videos so I’ll have something to offer the “group”.   

Enough.

Are we this lonely?  Where are our friends?  Don’t we have anyone to talk to, to share air with? 

Or, are we talking everything to death?

© Copyright 2007-2011 Stacye Carroll All Rights Reserved