Social Networking Can’t Be Anti-Social, Right?

While doing some research on a project that is going to require impeccable accuracy, I came across a list of social networking websites on Wikipedia. It was impressively long. I made it my mission to sign up for as many as I could – after all, social networking is a huge component of being truly effective at Effing The Dog. Signing up for these sites alone took me well over a few hours. I was already hooked.

The main social networking sites I regularly monitor are as follows:

1. Twitter

2. Facebook

3. Plurk

That's it. I don't visit my MySpace page very often, mainly because it irks me that I have to type the word my twice in a row when describing it. I post "tweets" a lot, as it seems as if that's what everyone else does, and I like blending into the crowd on these sites. I'm the type of guy who wanders aimlessly through the crowds at house parties just so I can avoid long, meaningful conversations. Plurk gives me karma, which I desperately need on all fronts. I also like to keep the government up to date on what I'm doing, how I'm feeling, and what virtual drinks I like to give - so I use Facebook.

Thanks to social networking, I rarely have to leave the house to keep in touch with people I either don't care about at all or enough to manufacture any kind of real friendship with. It keeps me out of the sun so I don't get sunbrun, or worse – leprosy. I am able to seem very intelligent in my conversations since I am constantly "wired in" as a result.

You have to be careful, though. Human contact is lessening as a result of these sites, and while I don't necessarily endorse human contact, it does allow us to get sick from one another. That's an important asset you need to have at your disposal when Effing The Dog – the ability to get sick. You also run the risk of having your old classmates from school show up in your profiles. They can either brag about their lives since then, or worse, burden you with their misery since then. Trust me – you don't want the most popular guy from high school's status staring you in the face when it reads "<Name> is sobbing uncontrollably while clutching his St. Manny's Athelete Of The Year Award. Thows were the days." (And the spelling errors are theirs, not mine.)

To sum up, just use FriendFeed. Then you get everything.