How are twitter and facebook affecting the culture of today?

Self-aggrandizement is at an all-time high! People everywhere want to know, no- need to know!- just what am I doing? My friend count is my social standing. My followers show just how influential I am. Or do they?

Walk down a busy street in any major city, or any city really, and notice. Watch. Observe. The sounds will be instantly familiar: car horns, cabbies shouting, street vendors, beggars and bums, and...chatter. Incessant chatter. A clamoring sea of unintelligible chatter! People, teeming masses of humanity, all slaves to their "mobile devices." No one is looking up, saying "hello", or taking in anything around them. All are talking into a glossy, marketed-just-for-them handset that just came out! Wi-fi! Mobile TV! All your social networking sites streaming in one app! Email capability is passe. The technological marvel from just a couple years ago of recording video with your phone is now old-hat. People are now the latest thing the phone companies have figured out how to assimilate into the device itself! Why?

If I don't let everyone know I just ordered a Venti Caramel Macchiato and the barista was...so...hot! my facebook friend in Des Moines that I've never actually met wouldn't know about the hot barista in...Chicago! And so it goes, people all over talking and texting and posting and...never more disconnected. I've witnessed two people walking side-by-side text each other! The male sent a joke to his female friend via text message. Maybe this was for later reference so that she would have the joke in text form forever saved to her 8gb micro-sd card. Perhaps. Couldn't he have relayed the joke himself, you know, with the first tool God gave us to relay messages to one another- our voice! Maybe he always screws up when telling jokes, so he chose to text it. I doubt his joke telling abilities will improve with his word-per-minute prowess. As a society, people rarely talk to each other. I mean extended conversations that see someone make a point and the other party counter with another opinion and so forth. We have devolved into a society of one-liners and blurbs. Just "status updates" and "tweets", no more nuance or full-bodied conversing with those we love.

Part and parcel of this epidemic is the underlying element of self-aggrandizement that accompanies all those twitter "followers" and facebook "friends". How many of your "followers" and "friends" have you actually TALKED to recently? For the vast majority it would be a finite percentage. We know more information about what everyone is doing and less about the person. Soulful interaction has been replaced by online fantasies and the voyeuristic impulse of knowing what so-and-so who lives 500 miles away is up to. Before, someone had to take time to compose their thoughts and arrange those thoughts before writing said thoughts down on a piece of paper, address an envelope, purchase a stamp, lick the stamp, lick the envelope, and mail the letter. This was a visceral process. It involved all of our senses. Taking time to think of someone, and with your own hand, compose a letter was paying that person a compliment. You thought enough of them to take some of your time and effort to put pen to paper and go through the process of sending some correspondence. This was a much more romantic, personal form of communicating with those that were far away. Waiting for the postman to bring you their reply was wrought with the anticipation of hearing good news from a far-off friend. Somehow, staring at a screen and typing and receiving instantaneous response pales in comparison.

Take time to put away the phones and gadgets and just walk down the street. Unencumbered and untethered from the virtual, choose to live in the actual- the physical. Notice the beauty that surrounds you: architectural detail that heretofore had eluded you, the elderly man on his stoop that is always smiling out at the world, a flower. Don't equate some cold, impersonal chatter for real connection. Reach out to those you care about, and I don't mean by "poking" them!