Is Social Media Killing My Social Skills?

Life Artistry Add comments
Feb 172010

First I want to thank all my readers who remind me daily to continue writing about life’s little journeys that I take everyone along for the ride with me on. I super appreciate all the kind words of encouragement and even more the death threats. I’ll do my best now to start focusing on writing more often even if its just a quickie update. Personally I think the proliferation of social media types like Twitter, Facebook and the likes have really started to draw me away from what life has to offer. While its important to keep in contact with friends as relationships are as only good as the effort put forth, there needs to be a line drawn. I’ve noticed that more and more I find myself not calling friends on special occasions as long as I can make the “connection” on the social media site. In essence the social media is pulling me further away of my goal of being even more social than my charming self will allow.

While I still make it out into the real world quite often, more so than what I am going to presume many of you dear readers, I do find that its so much easier to actually sit and watch twitter or facebook than it is to reach out and make a connection. As many of you, if not all of you, know that I have practiced social dynamic life artistry skills to help me seduce the world. While many younger guys might only see this as an application to seduce women, learning these skills offers so much more. The ability to understand the human engagement as an opportunity to delve into the psyche is an amazing journey of all our senses and furthers communications. Having the knowledge is nothing less than what my good friend Dan says; “A super power.” Yes Dan it is indeed.

I’ve been very successful at honing in on my unique rapport abilities and conditioning myself to engage in every opportunity to get out of the house and socialize. I was never a shy person, except maybe in my early childhood days, but as Milton Ericson so eloquently put it, shyness is a defensive mechanism to protect us from the big-bad-wolf, AKA the world. Perhaps in childhood I was simply protecting myself form the inequities of the tyranny of evil men. After I learned that it was I who held all the cards to the world I not only got out of my shell but I bloomed into a social beast.

This leads me to about a couple of weeks ago. I met a really sweet babe who I have a lot in common with. We have been playing a game for a while and it was so easy for me to do that thing that I do. It wasn’t about getting facebook info or her number as its second nature to do so. What I found kind of weird this time around was, even knowing full-well she wanted for me to call her (She insisted I take her number) it was still easier for me to contact her on facebook. Then came the texting and just this past week I finally called her. I knew she wanted to talk and never before has it been an issue for me to call anyone before, and I do mean never before. It’s like all of a sudden its just gotten easier to not communicate with people face to face and rather chat or post on their wall. This way there really can be no consequences to our actions as really even though they are our words they are unattached to who we really are.

It’s my view that social media is in actuality anti-social media that allows us to behind the anonymity that the Internet leads us to believe. Yes while I completely understand that in essence Facebook offers us no privacy as that goes, we still do not suffer the consequences of our actions from face-to-face encounters. I for one will be more cognisant of my online interactions using the so called social media venues and will thus far prefer human interaction. Rather than focusing on Facebook interactions I’ll focus more on my life’s journey here on my blog.

Posted by SteveO at 8:36 pm Tagged with: , , ,
  • http://www.foundmyfitness.com/ Dan

    Rather than focusing on Facebook interactions I’ll focus more on my life’s journey here on my blog.

    Do I detect some subtle-steve-styled irony? :-)

  • Dale

    Ahh, you’re quite mistaken! It can be those things… possibly. Or, it’s the next step towards humans pushing past the 150 (Dunbar’s) number of nodes we are currently, effectively, limited to. Since it’s new, not all the kinks have been worked out. And, you are quite rightfully, kinked!

    In my case, it allows me to have people like you and Dan in my circle of friends although I’m geographically/physically isolated from you. That’s pretty damn cool.

  • http://www.foundmyfitness.com Dan

    Socializing on the internet is a bit of a unique, intellectual experience that does bypass the use of other important social skills. So I can kind of see using it too much causing a sort of imbalance, albeit only temporarily. I notice if I spend too much time inside I can feel a little out of sorts when dealing with strangers again… That’s OK though. It’s mild in nature, and I can always force them back into place and exceed my own expectations later on.

    I actually took the bait and looked up the Dunbar’s number on wikipedia and it referred to the “Hutterites,” a religion which is related to the ameish. I actually took a course that required us to do a lot of reading on this group. I seem to recall that they have a policy for marrying really, really young too (as young as 13), and here’s the interesting part that has nothing to do with Steve’s post… they die younger. Their average lifespan is in the 50s. Kind of fits the delaying-reproduction-to-old-age expands species-lifespan stuff.

  • http://www.foundmyfitness.com Dan

    Steve, you might conside installing subscribe-to-comments. It’s a little weird in the newest wordpress though — once you install it, you need to go into the plugins directory, then into the subscribe-to-comments folder and copy it one directory up to the plugins folder for some reason.

    This plugin is awesome because it adds a checkmark to your posts automatically that lets people subscribe by email. Works really, really, really well.

    Alternatively, you could also setup Disqus. I’m seeing a lot of trendy use of this on the social media poweruser circles. It replaces your current comment form with one that requires that users login with either their Disqus, their facebook, or their twitter login and plugs in their avatar and links to these accounts on their posts. Also allows them to post their comment and link to your website on their profile, and adds threading.

    In any event, Disqus.com has an awesome video talking about it for publishers, or you can just check it out on Chris Brogan’s site.

  • junkyfungus

    Thanks for the suggestion Dan about Disqus, Installed and now working correctly.

  • SteveO

    Well Dan I have installed Disqus and oddly enough it works terrific, except on this post where it’s been suggested. Perhaps there is a blog gremlin at work here. Someone hit the air breaks.

  • junkyfungus

    I have to admit Dan, I'm really starting not to like Disqus. Accordingly, as of right now, it will not allow you to have more than one facebook account. Even though I have my personal page and then one for my charity. I submitted a help ticket but who knows!

  • junkyfungus

    I have to admit Dan, I'm really starting not to like Disqus. Accordingly, as of right now, it will not allow you to have more than one facebook account. Even though I have my personal page and then one for my charity. I submitted a help ticket but who knows!

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