This is a rant.

I remember way back when Friendster was revolutionary, blogging was not taken seriously, and hotornot.com was the big voting website. Now we’re all connected, social, and sharing files. After signing up for almost all of the big social networking sites, I’ve found myself in a peculiar state of mind. I’m linked into all of the latest news, memes, videos, gossip, etc. But, I am utterly bored of it all.

The constant access and lack of mystery leaves me with never wanting more.  Will the next generation (after Gen Y/Millenials) ever know what it’s like to know absolutely nothing someone. Instead of asking face-to-face questions, they will only have to check out their MySpace/Facebook or Google.  Yes. We already do this, but we also still have the skills we learned from childhood to be bold to another person’s face.  Giving verbal praise or calling someone out to their face was the norm. Now we can communicate with comment boards (not even private messages).

How will this impact coffee shop debates? All of the annoying niceties that we’re so glad to get rid of… the wasted time chatting with someone for an hour, when you need just one phone number… the long phone conversations after long periods of non-communication. I remember that the loss of intimacy was a fear when e-mail became widespread, and it’s still a fear. And very debatable.

And what about our privacy? Yes, I’ve put myself out there as much as anyone else, but if MySpace was around when I was a teenager… or even in college. Well, I don’t want to make anymore revealing comments.  But, you know.

Who knows what will happen to this next generation. Will we GenXers–who were once the pinnacle of cool disenchantment–be left in the dark? Or are we lucky to be the last generation who got to come of age in private?