Blog: Social networking sites

            Social networking has become an almost essential part of life. Most of our interactions have evolved to immediate communications with friends and family. For today’s blog post I decided to compare and contrast the experiences I have visiting various sites and how they are structured differently. The first, and one of the most popular sites is Facebook. Personally, I deleted my Facebook account close to 3 years ago. I found that I was devoting too much of my time in following other people’s lives. In a moment of introspection, I found myself having a tougher and tougher time being happy for people and I was envious of the lives people led on social media. Constant travel photos and new cars, clothing, pets hid the reality of people’s situations and I had to remove myself from that environment.

            Revisiting the site and most of my old impressions were pretty accurate. My feed was littered by people I had not spoken too in a very long time all commentating sage advice about the world while visiting foreign lands. It was striking and unsettling the nosiness the site created in me to find out what people I haven’t spoken to in years were up to. Compared to Facebook, I have a much better opinion of Twitter. Though there are certainly similar forms of envy, most of my twitter follows are based on sports, politicians and comedians who post entertaining and useful information. In the limited characters, Twitter gives me a brief glimpse into what’s going on in the world I am interested in.

            Another site I frequent is Reddit. Compared to twitter, it is far more involved experience, where I can have larger discussions with people. It is an experience very far removed from Facebook because the users have a level of anonymity where there words and ideas matter more than who they are. Additionally it is a site where you can follow and interact with people who have similar interests no matter how niche they are. I first found the site when I wanted to build my own computer and buy the parts individually. On Reddit, I found a community who were willing to offer advice and answer questions provided I put in the work to research things. The last social media site I want to blog about is called DeviantArt. I am not an artist but I do enjoy the works other people create. On DeviantArt people present what they have created and there are small communities of people who follow certain styles. I personally follow some pretty funny comics and I found the site when I was in middle school looking for wallpapers. It really is a creative-oriented site and what matters more than anything there is the art.