I am a curmudgeon who doesn't like social media

Why I don’t bother with social media – well because it’s full of very unhappy people, who complain about everything…like me!

First of all to say that I do have accounts in several social media platforms, which initially never bothered to update. Then my friends started updating their own status and I felt I had to add my two pennies worth every now and then and never thought much about it. Until I started Squared Online and I asked myself why I, who has adopted every gadget under the sun (I even have a Pebble watch, a very silly thing to have, I admit), has resisted to fall for social media.

Let’s start with Facebook. When I first joined I used an alias instead of my full name. Gradually friends found me and to this date it has remained a friends only network. Some of those friends have started using Facebook messenger, which annoys me no end. I prefer email.

Twitter. I was a very late adopter of this network and I am still doubtful as to its potential. Part of me thinks it could be a wonderful way of communicate. The limitation to 140 characters could help users to sharpen their wits. A sort of Haiku. I am still working on this, although in the meantime I only tweet tennis results or silly updates about Clumsy Ninja to get free lives. I have certainly failed to make the best possible use of Twitter.

Blogging seems to offer a great opportunity to say all those important things we feel strongly about. And yet, I have not really taken to it. I have two or three half abandoned blogs littering cyber-space. They are of very different topics. It is only now, as part of this exercise, that I have forced myself to really think about why I had given them up so quickly. It was not the lack of things to say, it was boredom. Those were just monologues, individual ramblings and as such boring.

This is exactly the reasons why I like sending and receiving emails. Much more so than telephone calls. I can’t always take the time to talk at length on the telephone, but an email I can answer easily. Emailing is my blogging, Facebook and Twitter combined.

I am a conversationalist and I like choosing who I talk with. That’s why social media, in its current format, is not quite for me.