Puppets

One of the bloggers I follow on a fairly regular basis has decided to sign off for the entire month of November.  She's neither writing blogs nor reading them, tweeting or re-tweeting, not even Facebooking.  She's gone AWOL not for any other reason than she feels she needs a break from virtual life to focus on her real one.  Some people might argue that her on-line community is merely an extension of her local one, but I get where she's coming from.  I really do.

I've been wrestling with some of this social media stuff myself ~ more specifically with Facebook.  For a venue that captures so much of our lives, which we willingly post, I might add ~ we have so little control over how the Facebook Masters manipulate us Facebook puppets.  They have our information in their hands to be dispensed, disposed of and/or archived to their liking.  That's the part that bothers me.  So lately I've been deleting photos (although I know Facebook keeps them in their basement) and been more selective on my personal posts, saying less.  That's not so hard.

The tough thing is I'm a commentator ~ I like to comment on other people's posts.  I guess that makes me feel like I'm part of the dialogue, but maybe it's more just about expressing my opinion simply because I have one. And I'm beginning to ask myself if that's really necessary; do people really care about my two cents' worth?  Do I really care?  And it's about at this point that I have to stop getting all philosophical about social media and just accept it at face value for what it is.  I'm just to be more careful about which media I attach my puppet strings to and how frequently I dance their dance.