A Trip Down Memory Lane...

Today I deleted my Myspace account.


Traumatic? Not the slightest, but it did take down memory lane. I mean, I had to backup all my pictures because prior to my Facebook days of photo sharing, I was using my mother's laptop to store my pictures and upload them. Let's just say some things went bad with the laptop, so I backed up as much files from it as I could. Shortly afterwards, my little sister and my dad got into an argument over laptop usage and let's just say the laptop lost the battle.


My current laptop is still a toddler. It turned one in like July and quite frankly, all my old photos never got restored on it. So today, I decided to do the dirty job of storing the ones I had on my Myspace on my laptop. This is what started my trip down memory lane and kinda made me squeamish at certain areas in thought.


I mean, much of it reminded me of my senior year of high school. All memories of my ex (who I don't harbor resentment or anger at) and the people I thought I was close to and assumed were actually my friends. How quickly things change over the matter of years and a summer.


I mean, my ex and I were pretty close, but things just faded away. Regardless of whether or not the rumors of what he supposedly said had anything to do with it, I don't know. I just know we aren't as close and we don't say much to each other. Ever. Well at least since the whole drama that went down this summer, which pretty much made us lose contact and aided in the creation of an war of sorts.


As for the girl who I thought I was friends with. I just have to shake my head. The argument was truly uncalled for and so were the additional participants that got dragged into it, but at the same time I can't really say anything. I said my piece. I was mature about it. She wanted to call in reinforcement and thought she had it all in the bag, but pretty much it backfired in her face. So, I have nothing left to say about that situation.


But as I was saying...it just brought back all these memories. The good and the bad. The old and the recent.

#whatmakesmesad

Oh twitter...you have disrupted our life the way facebook had done a few years prior. You have become increasingly significant in filling us in on the gossip and letting us air our dirty laundry, allowing wondering minds to know everything about us. Oh twitter...how wonderful you are.

While my sentiments might appear that I hate twitter, I have to admit I'm addicted to it. At first everyone thought that Myspace was this big corruption tool, allowing others to peer into our lives, see our photos, and now every detail about our every move. Then Facebook came along and it was increasingly detrimental because now we really knew who everyone was. There was no need for alias, Facebook prided itself on that, even though some of us can't let go of Myspace days and feel the need to throw in an alias as their middle name. No twitter has proven itself to be the most detrimental.
Twitter is like the best of both worlds, in a sense.
You can maintain your alias, but it doesn't take much to find out who the person actually is. We have a picture to identify the person with and when you look at their profile, in the top corner is there name. (People can go really Myspace and fabricate one, but most people don't). Twitter is even more amazing since celebrities all over are tweeting. So now the realms of what was once private and a guessing game for the mind no longer exists.
Celebrities post their every move and thought, regular people post their every move and thought, and now we have entered the world of no return. To make matters worst, you can even have your tweets tracked, so people can find out where they came from. How crazy is that in the post days of being told as a child not to give out any of your information to strangers?
Now, that's not the only crazy thing about the twitter, but I believe there is no age limit on who can join (as if that ever stopped those underage).*
Twitter, as I was saying before, is truly the best of both worlds. We can send each other private messages, known as direct messages, we can hold conversations with each other and leave public messages, called replies, we can encourage people to engage with each other on a topic, referred to as trending topics, we can post what someone else wrote, acknowledged as retweeting (RT) and soo much more.

Now, before I continue...I AM NOT BASHING TWITTER. As I think I stated before, I'm an avid user. I really enjoy the challenge of expressing myself in 140 characters or less. I enjoy reading about what other people are doing or thinking. And I enjoy being able to read convos and thoughts that were once upon a time off limits to me.
I'm just worried about the consequences of all of this.
If you think about it, nothing is private anymore. No thoughts, actions, or opinions. But at the same time, I guess it's a good thing. If it wasn't for trending topics, I'm pretty sure most of us who don't watch the news would be so active participants in discussing our opinions on it, even if some of those opinions are those of complete ignorance.

So, I guess my point is...what will we come up with next?

*note: I can't remember if Twitter has an age requirement for users, so don't take my word on that part, but I think my point is clear.