Go Friend Yourself

I can say with 99.99% certainty that I am the only commercial real estate broker in Nashville who doesn't own a blackberry or blackberry-esque devise.

I can also say with 99.99% certainty that I am on the only citizen of the United States of America who has sent less than ten text messages in the last 365 days (six to be exact).

Finally, I can say with 99.99% certainty that I will never have a Facebook page.

I am not claiming to be a Luddite or a technophobe (I don't know many technophobes who have blogs). However, I am trying to say that from my observations and experiences with blackberrys, texting, and social media, I think the costs outweigh the benefits and the risks outweigh the rewards.

This article from the WSJ entitled How Facebook Ruins Friendships is probably the best article I have read on the risks and costs of social media.

Some of the highlights of the article:

Here's where you and I went wrong: We took our friendship online. First we began communicating more by email than by phone. Then we switched to "instant messaging" or "texting." We "friended" each other on Facebook, and began communicating by "tweeting" our thoughts—in 140 characters or less—via Twitter.

....But there's a danger here, too. If we're not careful, our online interactions can hurt our real-life relationships.

Like many people, I'm experiencing Facebook Fatigue. I'm tired of loved ones—you know who you are—who claim they are too busy to pick up the phone, or even write a decent email, yet spend hours on social-media sites, uploading photos of their children or parties, forwarding inane quizzes, posting quirky, sometimes nonsensical one-liners or tweeting their latest whereabouts. ("Anyone know a good restaurant in Berlin?")

.....But let's face it, the problem is much greater than which tools we use to communicate. It's what we are actually saying that's really mucking up our relationships. "Oh my God, a college friend just updated her Facebook status to say that her 'teeth are itching for a flossing!'" shrieked a friend of mine recently. "That's gross. I don't want to hear about what's going on inside her mouth."

That prompted me to check my own Facebook page, only to find that three of my pals—none of whom know each other—had the exact same status update: "Zzzzzzz." They promptly put me to "zzzzzzz."

This brings us to our first dilemma: Amidst all this heightened chatter, we're not saying much that's interesting, folks. Rather, we're breaking a cardinal rule of companionship: Thou Shalt Not Bore Thy Friends.

"It's called narcissism," says Matt Brown, a 36-year-old business-development manager for a chain of hair salons and spas in Seattle. He's particularly annoyed by a friend who works at an auto dealership who tweets every time he sells a car, a married couple who bicker on Facebook's public walls and another couple so "mooshy-gooshy" they sit in the same room of their house posting love messages to each other for all to see. "Why is your life so frickin' important and entertaining that we need to know?" Mr. Brown says.