h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I see you've been here within the last four months or so, so perhaps you'll pop back in sometime and see that I've said hello.

If I miss you again, send me an email or something. I miss chatting with all my friends who haven't turned up on Facebook.

Hope you're well!

Hello there broe!

Sorry I haven't replied sooner - I saw your post way back but fell foul of the login problems and couldn't respond, Just to add insult to injury, I wrote a lengthy response earlier this evening, pressed 'post message' and the whole thing disappeared into the ether. I'll copy the text before posting this time! I still check in to h2g2 and read stuff fairly regularly, but I'm afraid all my online activity tends towards passive browsing these days. My excuse is that internet time tends to be after long days at work when what passes for my brain is frazzled and the rest of me is suggesting that it might prefer a nice lie-down. Pure idleness plays a part, too, of course.

Thanks to some of my many younger cousins I do, in fact, have a presence on Facebook. I'm no fan, however, and only really go there as a last-ditch Chore Avoidance Strategy, when I've exhausted all other means of online or televisual time-wasting. I'm rather keener on Twitter, although I rarely tweet anything terribly interesting. My Twitter handle should be fairly easy to find for anyone from h2g2!

Thanks for dropping by and saying hello. I'll try to be a bit more active hereabouts in future (although I think I may have broken that promise a few times already...)

Hope all is well with you, too!

I'm not sure why I enjoy fb so much. It can certainly be infuriating. Actually, it can be downright depressing witnessing the display of ignorance we have to share the planet with. On the other hand, though, I can keep up with many more friends than I would have time to if I actually had to go meet them, see everyone's kids growing up, and just Monday I saw pictures of the damage my sister had done to her car in the snow where, otherwise, I'd have only heard about it. I also kind of enjoy Grandma admonishing me when I post pictures of her online and her sister calls her up to say "I saw your picture on the computer!" (Grandma is 95. Her sister is 75.) She keeps threatening to get a computer of her own, but I'm not sure what she'd do with it. After much practice she's mastered the television remote control, but she still struggles sometimes with the digital camera.

Facebook is also good for scheduling parties and events I've found. Not that I schedule them (normally), but I get lots of notifications about events I've been invited to that I'm missing. And then it goes on to tell me about other events near me which other friends will be attending. Which is a bit creepy, actually.

I have a twitter, but I don't tweet much, either. Mostly because I don't have followers, it would be a lot like talking to myself in an empty room about stuff that doesn't really matter much. Although I might be up to about 4 followers now, maybe I should tweet something profound to see if they're paying attention. Mostly I downloaded twitter for traffic reports, but occasionally I use it for following live-tweets of programs I'm watching on tv.

Thing is, I do *most* of my social networking from my phone, and fb has just been the easiest to figure out and keep up with in that format. I did manage to put a bookmark widget to my h2 user space on my screen, and I can check conversations and such on the go, but typing something like this would take for-EV-er on a phone.

I've recently added Instagram to my phone, too. Not sure why I did that yet, still poking at it to see what it does. I guess the main reason fb stuck is that it's the most like this place, where I can have several conversations going on with dozens of people at once and keep track of them all. But the people here are nicer, by far.

Most of the my Facebook friends are family members and old real-life friends and colleagues. I've also used it to follow a couple of interests or hobbies. What I don't enjoy is the amount of 'junk' (and I know that's a totally subjective and probably unreasonable judgement, by the way!) that some people endlessly post; I have, for instance, an ex-colleague who has to let everybody know every single thing that her beloved chocolate-smeared child does, and a relative who has to forward every last video, photo and motivational platitude that comes her way. I also have certain people who like to expound their political views at great length. The trouble is I'm fond of most of these folks and wouldn't want to offend them by unfriending or ignoring them!

I suppose the advantage of Twitter is that even though it has a lot of the same 'junk', it's always kept brief! I don't have too many followers either (and only a handful are family or close real-life friends), but then I'm used to talking to myself! As well as being handy for things like travel news and weather, I've found it quite useful on a local level, having a chance to exchange thoughts with councillors, reporters, businesses and organisations in my area in a way that would otherwise be unlikely for a lowly nobody like myself. And yes, on that note there is also, perhaps a little shamefully, that thrill of interacting with celebrities - I still have a couple of followers from being retweeted by Jonathan Agnew (someone who will probably mean nothing to you, I realise - you'll have to take my word for it that he's a VIP - or ask Gosho).