Blogging opened doors for me that I never imagined existed.

But Twitter? It means nothing to me. Facebook is tolerated only because I want to keep up with a couple of people.

Even though there are those who consider such tools as the be all, end all in communication, I prefer to do without. All the more for them, then, right?

I love that my folks have embraced the digital age to the extent that they have. I find it amusing that I can email my dad. My DAD! Who’d a thunk it? Certainly not I! And my mom, I want very much to get her started with computer graphics. She’d be fantastic. But neither of them will ever have a Facebook page or a Twitter account. And for that I’m glad.

Obviously I have embraced both Twitter and Facebook. I’ve been on FB for . . . I don’t even know how long but it was way back in the day I can assure you. And Twitter I played around with when it first came out but most of my friends weren’t using it yet so it had limited utility until more of the poker world jumped on board. There’s no doubt that both are great tools for connecting with people. Especially FB where people from your past can reconnect pretty easily and it has such a low learning curve that even my dad gets it (sorry dad).

The joke (which I guess was only funny to me) was intended not necessarily to poke fun at the utility of the tools but at the way they are far too commonly used.

See, I think you make a very good point when you say “Most of our day-to-day interaction is fairly benign.” It is. Especially mine

It’s one thing to say that a tool is useful in connecting old high school buddies but does everyone need to know if your baloney sandwich was yummy? In fact, I think you make several good points that support the feelings behind the joke. Hearing about your buddy getting pepper sprayed would be like “Whoa, dude, what happened?” and you want to hear the whole story. It’s interesting. It’s something that is useful to other people in the sense that it is an experience most people who know him might like to know about or hear more about.

But like I said, most people don’t care about the benign aspects of our lives. Would you jump on your phone and call all of your friends to tell them you really liked your sandwich? Of course not because you know they don’t care.

And then there are the people who go out there and try to get as many friends or followers as they can and then have nothing to say except to post every minute detail of their life from the time they wake up “Woke up tired today” to when they go to bed “Tired now. Going to bed.”

And that’s what the joke is making fun of. People who post their “status” when it is of no relevance to anybody else.

To get the most out of life, we have to move fast and go places