SOCIAL NETWORKS: LET'S TRY THIS ONE MORE TIME...

I have not been a big fan of social networks. MySpace quickly degraded into a cesspool and Facebook isn't faring too well either. Even the kind of network one would think I might be all over -- one focused on gaming, whose name I can't remember and whose bookmark I can't find -- suffered the same fate: I created an account, checked it a few times, then forgot about it the first week.

There's a saying in the Unix world, a response to the allegation that Unix and its derivatives aren't user-friendly: "It is user-friendly, it's just not as promiscuous about who it calls its friends." I feel the same way about random contacts on social networks. Even if we've never met in real life, never talked in some corner of the internet...we can still be called 'friends'? If it were 'contacts' I might be more willing to add everyone and his mother to my contacts list. But unless we've had some kind of connection, 'friend' is not quite appropriate.

I bring this all up because the whole join-a-social-network-and-then-forget-about-it thing has started again. This time, it's Atheist Nexus that's the culprit. We'll see how long this one lasts. My page is here.