Free from "social" media...

So this morning I met a great friend for coffee...for like 2 hours.  We met in a quaint little coffee shop just up the road...The Muddy Cup in "downtown" Bellevue.  The coffee was great, the atmosphere was even better, and the conversation was phenomenal.  And it got me to thinking...

Lately, I haven't been on facebook as much.  I have been on twitter even less.  These little e-gadgets are designed to put us in community with one another.  And in a sometimes sad, often inauthentic, way they do.  I believe what these so-called "social media" tend to do is to create a sense of community which really couches the reality of isolation.  

Often, facebook updates are attempts to gain self-pity and to draw attention to oneself.  Twitter, it seems, caters more to the ego.  We tweeters tend to espouse our own intelligence, or worse, to "retweet" the insightful maxims of alleged gurus of a particular field.  And what, at least to me, tends to be the end product?  Isolation.  

And yet a conversation on the porch with Carla, my best friend in the world, is priceless.  It isn't proud, or selfish, or inauthentic in any way.  The chat in the "the farthest thing from Starbucks" coffee shop this morning is tacitly irreplaceable by any alleged "social" media. 

I'm not deleting my facebook page, or shunning twitter for eternity.  But as I find myself less and less attracted to them, I find myself having greater and more inspiring, and yes, more "social," interactions than ever!