I used to see it in small children all the time: a complete overwhelming of the senses. When music, joy, people, colors, and usually it's been either too long since a snack or a nap, there erupts a Meltdown with a capital M.
Adults go through similar things. We have social networks, emails, forwards, text message forwards (evil things), Crackberries, Ipods, RSS feeds and wikis bringing us all the latest and greatest information right now! And while society frowns upon us flinging ourselves on the ground, kicking, screaming, crying we still find subtler ways of making others around us as miserable as we are feeling.
In my RSS feeds, there's been a trend to show how over loaded, over networked, and divided amongst things we are. It's a decent reflection: I've gotten three new social network invitations in the past month. I have one friend who hasn't read her Bloglines in the better part of two months--and will probably go in and hit "Mark All as Read" soon. Even David Rothman-- who is a large cheerleader for being selective and careful in how much you're subscribing yourself to-- seems to have a new social network for physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals a couple of times a month. Jennie pointed out that she's paying attention to fewer of her Facebook alerts (me too!).
We all jumped in and now it's a balancing act. Carefully weeding the feeds that annoy us or just duplicate what we've read elsewhere. Truly, I can only read about the same library science or Britney Spears story so many times. And if one more person points me to John Blyberg's recent post--I just might have a "capital M" Meltdown myself.
I could give a long diatribe on our need to connect, our lack of connecting, our over sharing and the slightly incestuous nature of library bloggers--but not today. Today instead I point you towards a comic that left me feeling very very vindicated in using my delete all button: Cathy.
No comments:
Post a Comment