This is when you KNOW social media has gone too far!

There have been reality television, Dateline episodes, and newspaper/magazine articles dedicated to the idea of becoming a social media addict. But I have a family member who is a real-life addict. Read this very disturbing conversation that took place after I announced that I am taking a break from reality television, magazines, and social media (a.k.a Facebook).


This was possibly one of the most perplexing g-chats that I've had in a long time :)

12:00 PM I'm deactivating my facebook account and stopping watching all reality tv
Ashley: lol random y?
me: reading non-friend blogs and
Ashley: dang antisocial ever?
me: Tooo much watching others live life instead of living life myself
Ashley: lol but that gives you inspiration and something to talk about
me: I also feel like I am giving too much of myself! I am becoming consumed with others and myself... it's too much! Thinking about what others think etc.
Ashley: i think you're overreacting
me: nope -- the other day while riding my bike I felt so free.... I am a 60's writer cousin...I am a thinker... I can't continue to go down this road...I need to pick up books instead of all this madness!
Ashley: fb keeps u connected dont u dare just dont view it! go on, respond to questions/comments, update ur status with your newest blog subject and keep it moving
me: NOPE! I am out!
Ashley: sigh, you're totally overreacting - i get reality tv but come on now
me: I am deactivating at 5:00 pm :)
Ashley: a hobbit!? old lady spinster? when mike goes to work you'll be petting your cats
me: just needed to let my facebook status catch on
Ashley: anxiously awaiting him to get home
me: hahahahahha
Ashley: and then he wont wanna come home
me: or I will be sitting at home reading a good book, writing a story/book, crafting, living life!
12:07 PM Ashley: you'll have nothing new to talk about other than a new recipe or something
me: I'm about to blog this conversation!
Ashley: hahaha -yes!
make sure you put in the spinster/cat comment and the natural head
hahaahahahaahahahahhaa
especially the natural head!
hahahaha

* I purposely excluded the natural head comment - why? because she asked me not too...

P.S. Read this article on social media - it's so funny how on-point she is?!?! Was she reading my brain?

What ever happened to Mystery
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/fashion/18mystery.html?ref=fashion
Favorite part: The world, you see, no longer has any tolerance for — let alone fascination with — people who aren’t willing to publicize themselves. Figures swathed in shadows are démodé in a culture in which the watchword is transparency.

Increasingly, the perception is that everyone is knowable, everyone is accessible and that everyone is potentially a star. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, blogs, personal Web sites with open-door chat rooms, the endlessly proliferating television reality shows are now commonplace forums for the famous who want to seem like ordinary people and for ordinary people who want to seem famous. Us magazine’s rubric “Stars, they’re just like us!” has now been inverted to “Us, we’re just like stars.”

THE theory appears to be that if you never shut up, no one can forget you. And that to shut up is to withdraw from life. I was seated not long ago next to a magazine editor, discussing a former glamour girl who had disappeared to a farm in South America. “I think it’s cool she was able to go cold turkey on being a celebrity,” I said. The editor answered sadly: “Really? I see it as giving up.”