to follow or not to follow!

that is the question.

I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me, and so I texted to his cell,  I followed him on Twitter and he added me on Facebook and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by shit loads of different technologies – and it’s not even dating rejections. It’s even work and real friendship related!

I was glad when Facebook came around from Myspace because the Myspace top-friends politics was just exhusting.

Except Facebook allows everyone to know what you’ve been up to. And if you’re like me – you’re really behind on answering stuff – so a friend might send me a message – but I might answer a wall post from the other day instead of the message – Facebook tells everyone I’ve just wrote a wallpost 2 a friend and makes it look like i’ve just ignored the message to my other friend.

Twitter has similiar etiquet to Myspace. If your friend joins you on twitter – you wanna follow your friend right! That’s the way it goes.

It’s flattering to be wanted to be followed as it points in the direction that a person thinks that you will have something interesting 2 say in 140 characters.  i don’t tend to follow big PR businesses back and stuff like that (since everything these days has 2 be exploited as advertising) but i always follow friends.

But what does it mean if a friend – who clearly knows how to use twitter – doesn’t follow you back?!

It is kinda an insult is it not?  In friendship circles this could mean that there is an unfair and very obvious hierarchy. Now to make iteven more complicated… imagine that friend asked you via twitter invite to come and follow them – and then doesn’t follow you back. thats one power structure at work. Come and see how I can write and how interesting I am in 140 characters – but im not even gonna follow you.

It’s wrote about in many different ways by so many people ( example: http://www.businessknowhow.com/internet/twitter-etiquette.htm  ) there are actual books published on this shit.

I have to say that I’m not a twitter following whore. I have people following me who i dont know and I haven’t followed them back because they’re just marketing.

so what does this mean socially? What does it mean philosophically?  If only Derrida was still alive. Agamben’s new book talks about the politics of friendship – and I think that this void of social networking is a great example of what he talks about.

To follow or not to follow, is the question!

Non-relational asethetics!