Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Google+

Here's the deal.

I still have an antiquated yahoo account for my email. I know, I know, I should have made the switch lightyears ago, when most of you were infants or fetuses in the womb. Feti? Fetae? I think fetuses is right.

REGARDLESS. I have two gmail accounts, neither of which I use. One is just for writing and commenting on blogger. The other one was a requirement for getting my Droid, which is definitely a racket on the part of google. I do not check those emails. At all.

OK, second thing: I am kind of paranoid about the intersection of my online and offline lives. Like, who knows if you are all not just reading this from San Quentin or Alcatraz or something? Or worse, some dingy room lined with pictures of me and locks of my hair, obtained in the creepiest of ways?

Um, sorry about that. I mean, I am sure you are fine. But it's those other loonies out there. WHO CAN YOU TRUST THESE DAYS and all that.

I will just stop beating around the bush and say that Google+, Google's answer to Facebook*, aside from having a really annoying "+" in its name, which means my fingers don't know where the key is and I have to actually look for it, is traumatizing me by foisting upon me an existential dilemma for the computer age.

I don't know which email address to use-- my "real" one, which I don't use but has my actual name in it, or my "public" one, which has no connection to me and won't even be found if I die. It is this huge quandary for me. Do I lower the veil on this one? Or do I maintain the separation in my life?

I know that it is not good for one's psychosomatic health to be all dividing things up into neat little boxes that way. People don't work that way. We are complicated behemoths, and our personalities and problems and emotions and wills are bound up in our sense of self. It's probably not healthy to divide them up this way, with one persona for one set of feelings and desires and confessions, and another for another.

GRR. I mean, it bothers me that I have a journal where I write about the things that I am ashamed to tell everyone, the secret heart of me that is not proud and bold. I would rather have ALL THE THINGS here, in one place, the good, bad, and ugly, but I am just not brave enough. Not yet.

Which takes me back to the whole Google_(()_*_)_(_+ THERE IT IS debacle. I don't like being reminded of my inability to accept all the things about myself. To show everyone, to be honest with you, about who I am. But at the same time, my sense of self-preservation, which is usually totally content to hide behind the football bleachers, smoking pot, has chosen this seemingly insignificant event to rouse itself.

Self, you are confusing. Google()_+DAMMIT, you are kind of just a piss-off to me right now. And Facebook, I am kinda pissed at you just because you won't let me be complacent.

And this probably didn't even make sense. Hmph. Whatever. I UNDERSTOOD IT. Which might be part of the problem. GRRROWL.

Oh, for the simpler times, when we just had to worry about who our parents were going to marry us off to.


*I don't even understand this, because Google owns 10% of Facebook, so... WTF.

3 comments:

  1. *schmaltzy voice here* If all the facets of a diamond faced the same direction, it wouldn't sparkle. *end schmaltz*

    I am going to do the same with Google+ as with every other internet fad. Let everyone else get on it first and see if it catches on. I only sign on to things when I start feeling out of the loop.

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  2. True story:
    I went from private school to public in 4th grade, and was so nervous that the public school kids would pick on me about my weird name that I went by my middle name. So all my family and church friends knew me by my first name, and all my heathen public school people knew me by my middle name. For a LONG time, I associated my first name with one aspect of who I was and my middle name with another, and HATED with massive anxiety for the two to cross paths.
    I avoided facebook like the fucking plague for ever, until finally, I just made two accounts, one for family and one for friends. It is a source of stress.

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  3. ARGH. And see, the whole Google+ thing is supposed to be like, "We have circles for everything! Neat little boxes for all the parts, and they do not have to overlap EVER!" And that sounds really attractive, but I am also too unthinking to have to deal with so much compartmentalization on a case-by-case basis. I got about 4 angry messages from family when I said "WTF" in a status update on fb. I DO NOT NEED THAT KIND OF STRESS IN MY LIFE.

    GAH

    I think I will end up transferring all the people to my real account. And just dealing with it.

    Or maybe Google+ will fail. I mean, what has Google ever done that has caught on, you know?

    ReplyDelete

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