So here I am debating about if I should clean up my place or keep dicking around as I tend to do (damn you facebook, I will rid you... eventually). Anyway, I am trying to make sense on how people interacted, or the common form of social interaction before the whole social internet networking (sin?) started. Funny though that I was there, but like a lot of my past, it is mostly all lost in time.

Friendster started in 2002, can never forget when Stephanie told me about it and how cool it was, how you can add friends and blah blah blah... I was "meh", really didn't see how 'amazing' it was. Then myspace came and sure enough I jumped on the band wagon. I am not sure exactly what put me on it in the first place, probably some hot girl or something. But really, what the hell did people do before all of these damn social internet sites? This was also when texting was in its infant, and cell phones, though becoming common, were still not as popular as now. I know a lot of people had instant messaging, and blogging was big (if you consider my 'journal' that I had on my 'sekond' website, then I started blogging in 2002, go fig).

Probably one main difference between now and then is how people socialized. Back in the 90's and early 2000's socializing was more aggressive, meaning that people had to take action to socialize. You would email someone, IM someone, post in their guestbook, or meet people in chatrooms. You would have to visit your favorite website often to check if it has been updated. In other words, socializing and 'interneting' was more of a aggressive approach, and was so pretty much until twitter/facebook (or some blogging even at that).

The came the storm of Twitter and Facebook, and everything changed. Socializing became more passive than aggressive. Where before you would contact someone on their status, now that person merely posts their status for everyone to see, and see who responds. It isn't surprising that this is more preferred than the aggressive approach as socially speaking people want the interaction without the effort, because when someone makes an aggressive approach to socialize, they put their ego at risk.

Now what about those who avoid the whole social networking craze? Now and days they are becoming more like ghosts. I have seen and heard alot of "how come you didn't invite me?" "um, I posted it on facebook". Society is becoming more intertwined in this social networking, and mostly passive networking, which makes me wonder if this is a continuing trend that will become more passive, or will implode on itself and become more aggressive. We have already seen it become more personal with the difference of myspace a facebook, so who knows.

I am waiting to see the next big thing in social networking, something that will take society into the next plateau much like twitter and facebook did. While I know location based networking is a craze, it's not as big of an impact as the "status update" craze was.

Maybe AOL will make a come back :p