Trading One Master For Another

Soooooo anyway, despite my declared aversion to making a grand proclamation to start off this blog, there is at least a little bit of explanation in order.



For the last few years I've been a happy social-networker, loading up my facebook wall, (then my facebook profile, then my facebook timeline) with all the info I wanted to share about my life...pictures and videos and notes featuring everything and everyone that I loved or was interested in.  I added a Twitter account about a year ago, and I try my best to make each timeline appropriately distinctive.  I'm pretty sure I've got a Google+ page, somewhere.


I figured I never really needed a personal blog, because facebook keeps me in touch with all the people I wanted (and of course plenty of people I don't want), connections are easy and seamless, and it's so simple to upload content, basically at the speed of thought.


Recently though, I've become less and less satisfied with my experiences on these major social nets. It's not really a privacy thing, per se - my life is pretty much an open book, and I often find the people wailing in the public square about privacy concerns to be rather ridiculous. Seriously, steal my identity. I dare you, and so do my creditors.

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair..."

Instead, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the feeling I get from my info/life being treated as a commodity. I've also never liked the idea that the people behind facebook have pretty much become billionaires by selling shit that people gave them for free.  Facebook is also just so large and monolithic now that being part of it really irks the pissed off 17-year-old punk who I still barely remember being once upon a time.


Another problem I have with facebook is that it's really only for the friends you already have.  I have never made a new friend through social networking...the closest I've come is meeting a new person out in a real live social setting and then getting to know them better through their online profile after that - but the original connections always happen in person. This means the posts I put out there get to all my friends, but usually only to my existing friends.  I'm interested in expanding the audience for some of the things I plan to write, and a blog seems better than a profile for that purpose.


I'm also not so sure that posting content "at the speed of thought" is such a good thing.  Thankfully I don't get drunk as much as I used to, but even sober I can end up posting things that I regret.  I've never had any major damage caused from a post, but I'm thinking Quit While You're Ahead applies well here.


So anyway, that's my purpose for finally pushing through and creating this blog: I want a place to continue posting my content to share with friends and also the world at large, and I want that content to be a little more thought out than just random postings from my iPhone, and I want that place to belong to me, not to facebook (Granted, putting this blog on a platform owned by Google may not actually be helping me much in this last regard, but it feels different in my head).


As I establish this space here, I'll be working towards a permanent deactivation of my facebook account, though I'll definitely be keeping my Twitter - it's my primary source (almost "only source" at this point) for getting news, and every once in a while you do just need to put a random thought out there.  If my Google+ account ever shows up on my doorstep, we'll go out for coffee and talk, but I'm not promising anything past that.