Anxieties about getting off

So tomorrow I don't log on to MySpace for a week Monday morning to Sunday at midnight. It will be interesting to see if I really care at all-but all ready I lost like 45 minutes to that damn site just wandering around it. I kind of can't wait to get away from it.

Frittering?

The fact I am so busy and pressed for time and caffineated seems to have enabled me to wean more off of MySpace-now I just kind of check in quickly, look at comments and bulletins, and then get out. I am excited to see if I can get out of MySpace-and how many people will actually have read the blog as well! There is just no tme to wander around the MySpace space..and it just seems so silly, but how I feel about people not putting me on their top 8 and all that bullshit-or when someone has...esp. when I consider who ISN'T on myspace who would be number one, two, etc. That is just a wrong way to think of people, of friends, as numbers, as ranks (a rather masculine way of thinking of friends, don't you thinki?)

Yes...getting better

I am really starting to let go of the virtual world-too many pitfalls, too many people knowing my business, better just to go back to the email world and simply calling or emailing friends about things I want to do with them. Much better than the virtual one.

Starting to feel I overdosed on it and used it as a crutch. Plus too damn busy now.

From April 24 through April 30th, I will NOT visit MySpace or Friendster simply because of the Adbusters campaign to stop watching TV week. Since I already DON'T watch TV, I thought of something else I could eliminate that wastes time and it was (big surprise) MySpace and Friendster. Plus, people can actually see on the site that I didn't log on.

Now there are definitely ways to cheat (such as typing in your weblink without logging on and viewing your profile) without the date being affected, but I will try my best not to do it. If I can't NOT log onto MySpace after ONE week, I am disabling my profile and that is THAT. I also want to renew the art of letter writing and art instead, so that when I go to Arizona it won't be a crutch for me to fall back on.

Log in, Log the Fuck Out

I logged in right when I got to work, but then logged out within five minutes.

I am starting to feel creepy about the whole social network. It feels too much like high school, in the starting to be bad way.

I think I am weaning myself off of it!

Whats the use...

I waited until 1pm today to view it, edited my profile, added a friend, read a message where a friend admonished me for not putting her in my top 8...but then saying she still loved me. GODDAMMIT. Is there any point in avoiding it? Maybe a more reasonable goal is simply to limit the time spent per each myspace visit rather than saying no Myspace whatsoever. I also have limited friendster pretty well..I just wish the people I knew from friendster would just be available on myspace so i could eliminate that visit as well....

I woke up!

I woke up and had no shame reaching for my laptop like a fix, like a cigarette, I reached over and opened up the little white plastic coffin and logged right on to that damn website. I am beginning to feel resentment towards this site. I am beginning to resent having to think of my friends of top 8s, and when I think of my friends instead of their laughing faces I think of their profile picture...

TV rots the brain which is why I don't watch it at all anymore, but the internet is just as bad in some ways, and when the repeated image of someones profiles resonates with you all the time, it is just not right. When people quote what you write in your profile instead of a conversation you have had with them..I am starting to look at my friends and picture their profiles, like a little Total Recall style science fiction...everyone has a digital symbiotic self tied to them in an invisible umbilical cord ( a la Donnie Darko) that comes up when I see them. I am looking at and talking with a friend but imagining them playing ping-pong or at a concert or at a park...in an experience I never had with them. I am double visioning representation and reality.

CRACK

God, I just wasted 25 minutes on this stupid ass thing! FUCK ME!

Totally OFF the wagon..with improvements

So I was able to wait until 10:30 to log on.

BUT, I decided one way to pare it down was just be friends with people I wanted to be friends with. I am also changing my blogs so that you can only read certain ones if you are a friend of mine. I want it to be slightly realer than it has been for me. Sure, I may be burning bridges and making a bigger deal of certain social situations than necessary, but in the end, why should I allow access to my life to people who arent out for my best interests when I have so many friends I love?

Cheating

- A student was looking at their myspace profile and I begged them to look at my profile at 1:30pm today, so I could see if anyone posted comments on there.

- I checked my bust email to see if there had been any new comments or emails and saw that there were new messages so checked it- that was around 3:30.

- Went to Liz's and checked it around 8:00

- At 2:30am, at the mere mention of myspace had to look even though I looked at the bust email account and there was no new activity-but had to connect to Nic!

-2:45am just had to look at Friendster for absolutely no reason

VERDICT: I suck.

Help me, My Space!

It truly is amazing, what a reflex it is. Every time I pick up my laptop, I immediately go to log on to MySpace! I am a smoker and never really considered myself a person enslaved by petty addictions. Sure, I have habits and can be neurotic like any east coast lady worth her decaf, but shit I had no idea. It is like a social tick, I just want more little taste, one more little - oh, here I am in the world! Here are my friends! Maybe I need to print out all the photographs from MySpace and hang them up in my room so I can view my friends outside the digital world?

Come home, logged on

After enjoying a wonderful dinner at Deluxe, I immediately logged on!

It was like a fucking reflux! Like come home, take off your coat, go to the bathroom, feed the cats, say hello, replug your cell phone...and fucking log onto MYSPACE! Shit. This is gonna be so much harder than I thought it would be...

My Space

FUCK!

I couldnt resist it! I had to peek at the profile! And I saw the guy I met at the conference and messaged had invited me as his friend on myspace, which validated that we did indeed hit it off and no he didnt hate me or think i was strange. GODDAMIT. It is such a validater and ego-booster and now everyone uses it to post bulletins about really important events coming up instead of mass emails! Goddammit! Is it possible to really stay connected and not use MySpace at this point? I couldn't help but look and it had been less than five hours!!!!1

My Space

Shit.

I am already FIENDING for a Myspace hit!!! I just wanna check it! I just want to see if there is a new message or comment so bad! I MUST RESIST and continue reading Thoreau!!!!

My Space

I am deciding after reading Emerson, that My Space has become 'my confusion'. The site has busied me in ways that are non-condusive to how I want to live-constantly checking other peoples pages, sure it is a voyeristic quality that has me hooked (as to everyone else), but it is not real. It can certainly feel real, but for instance, I am 'friends' with T.D., a member of the band B.D.s. I have seen them perform countless times, have danced with him at house parties, even exchanged words with him outside the Zeitgeist gallery about brands of cigarettes. But last night I went to meet Helen at ZuZus and he was the host-while we had the exchange of recognition, he was still an employee there and we did not interact as friends what so ever. I mean, he knows nothing about me unless I post something that piques his curiousity as well. It is simply not real life. It can certainly be collaberative to 'real life', but the phone-that is real life. Talking to some one, making plans to do activities with someone-that is friendship-not randomly leaving comments on their page or emailing people who look cool in the hopes of doing something at some point in real life.

So I have put myself, like Helen and Dereck saying NO to food and alchohal, I am saying NO to friendster and myspace.

To challenge myself, I will post on this blog every day about not being on it.

So at 2:48, I am saying NO to MySpace for TEN days.