Guess What I Did Today!

We all have those "friends" on Facebook, Twitter, etc. etc. who update us on all the minutia of their everyday lives. "Havin pork chops for dinner. Yummm lol" and "Just did laundry and one of my socks is missing!" aren't uncommon snippets I come across when I scroll through my newsfeed. Do I get annoyed sometimes when I have to sift through the "Going to the gym"s and "It's only Tuesday :("s? Sure. Do I sometimes do the same thing? Probably. At first, being the Luddite I am, I blamed it on computers and the Internet and this new-fangled-technology-centric society, but then it dawned on me...

This is not a new phenomenon. People have been recording the inane details of their lives since the beginning of recorded history, starting with cave paintings of how the earliest Homo Sapiens killed their dinner- ancient versions of "Havin pork chops for dinner. Yummm lol."

These early cave paintings are spread across the continents and span oceans, before people traveled very far from home. They have been found in the dusty Australian deserts and the highest mountains in Mongolia. The need to record life events is almost as instinctual as breathing. Throughout the years, the mediums through which people etched their goings-on have evolved with technology; paintings and storytelling before writing, journal and letter writing for the affluent before widespread literacy, then journal and letter writing on a wider level. All were similar in one important aspect: they were personal and not widespread.

Then the Internet came along and changed everything. (I wonder how many subjects you can say THAT about).

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites that allow one person to display anything to the masses are really just instantaneous, widespread cave paintings and journals. Technology has evolved and so has the character of the "recording" instinct. Instead of writing down every single detail of your day in a journal, you write them down and publish them to a mass audience.

The repercussions of this "new" phenomenon come with negative and positive effects- sometimes to the extreme. On one hand, knowing what people in your networks are doing all the time makes you feel part of a closer community (this sense of community is not only the subject of another post, but serious study in the field of media effects academia). On the other hand, statuses and Tweets based on what you did last Saturday night have been known to be the cause of firings and divorces.

There are two factors we have not really figured out as they relate to this personal diarrhea-of-the-Internet: the instantaneousness and false sense of privacy. It might be in our best interest to take some time before we post anything to really think about 1. If we should post it and 2. Who might see it. Everyone, with the right resources, can see everything you have ever done on the Internet. Technology is evolving faster than our social commonsense.

So, the next time you're scanning through your newsfeeds and see a bunch crap you don't really care to read about regarding your "friends'" lives, just remember- our earliest cavemen ancestors did the same thing. We can't help it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go pick up Grant from the airport, make fish tacos, and watch some Golden Girls before going to sleep.