How is Facebook different from Twitter? And why don’t I use it to “stay connected”?

A friend asked in the comments section of my Twitter post where Facebook came in to the whole “how I stay connected” subject. I dubiously answered “in anodder post” (anodder = another).

Although Facebook is just as much a communication medium as Twitter is, and maybe even more popular because of all the activities that it offers to people, to me it is a whole different kind of medium. I recounted the times Twitter has kept me grounded with news from my world and how it keeps me connected in that way. However, I have to admit that the Facebook brand has not evolved into a serious medium for me. And I can only speculate why.

The answer may lie in the history I have with Facebook. I joined somewhere around April of 2007 after reading one of my favourite blogs and seeing her mention it. I even blogged about it:

i found this place… http://facebook.com … quite by accident when browsing one of my favourite blogs … somehow it seems to have caught my attention far more than myspace or hi5 ever did. i really don’t know why. in any case, i think i will try and keep up with this one – at least for a while. should be fun.

Based on the other site references in that paragraph, you should be able to surmise the mindset I had when I joined: another place to be spammed and harassed for dates and “hook-ups” and people “wanting to be friends” (does anyone really value the meaning of a “friend” anymore?)

Thankfully, Facebook turned out to be less of an annoyance for me than the other two places and I have stuck with it. The other 2 haven’t been as lucky and whereas my myspace account still exits, my Hi5 one met the delete key quite recently.

Some might accuse me of being anti-social, and in a sense that might be so, but when you REALLY don’t want people randomly sending “friend” invites just because your photo looks good or intriguing or interesting or they just want someone new to talk to …

Look, don’t get me wrong – I am NOT in the least bit averse to making new friends. I welcome the opportunity to make new friends (wow, I never knew how passionately I felt about the whole concept of “friending” on social networks until I wrote this post) and when I say friends, I mean FRIENDS – people I like, have things in common with, can have more than a how’s-the-weather type conversation with, someone who ends up caring about me and me about them … that kind of thing takes time and interaction.

Facebook does provide the perfect medium for that kind of interaction and I have made a few friends – some are friends of friends; in the early days, I did the random accept friend-invite thing too just to see what it was like ; those who I accepted because of games I played (Metropolis requires you to “friend” your neighbours); and of course, there are the people who you lost touch with (school mates and old work colleagues or even family members) who you just have to re-connect with.

Frankly, Facebook tends to be quite “spammy”. I can’t seem to get away from the Hi5 and myspace relationship that the service has. It doesn’t help that quite a few people on my “friends” list actually use the service to entertain themselves (Oh how I miss FB Purity and it’s ability to block the random “I just levelled up” messages).

It’s not that I don’t want to know that you’re having a good time playing your games, it’s that if 50 of you are having a good time playing games, then I miss the messages from the 10 other people on my list. Messages that I actually would like to respond to from time-to-time. It’s a lot of work to wade through 50 people talking about their game activities to find the one “I tested Google Chrome on my Linux box today and oh boy am I excited” message to respond to.

To sum it all up … Facebook provides me the opportunity to check in with people and say “Hey, how ya doin?” and provide others with the “how I’m doin’” updates as well. Yet at the same time, it tends to be off-putting simply because most people use it as a party medium. I like Facebook, and will probably always use it, but don’t expect me to view it in the same light as I do Twitter. It just isn’t the same for me.

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Definition: greed |grēd| noun intense and selfish desire for something, esp. wealth, power, or food.

What comes to mind when I say that greed is a destructive emotion?

Me? I think of a grossly obese man stuffing his mouth with food, with a stack of empty dishes at his elbow (he’s already eaten plates full) and a table full of food in front of him (intent to eat even more).

I am not prejudiced. I am very much aware that obesity isn’t always caused by greed and that sometimes it is the result of a medical condition beyond the control of the person. This is not what I am referring to here. I am not even trying to write about the eating habits of the dubiously obese.

I would define greed simply as being the want for more of something that is already owned or consumed. It is usually used in reference to money or power – have some, want more. My father has said on many occasions “absolute power corrupts absolutely” in reference to the many megalomaniacs we have observed together.

I see it in leadership everywhere, the heady feeling of being able to tell someone what to do, how to do it and when to do it gets out of hand so often. Yelling at people, making them feel small and insignificant, making them believe they’ve made mistakes when the mistakes were never theirs .. oh yes, I see it everyday – even now. And it’s the hunger, the greed for the power that makes them able to do it that drives them.

And for a literary reference, Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale, comes to mind also when I hear the word “greed”. The Pardoner told a tale of greed being the demise for many. And he prefaced his tale with an explanation of which these words are a snippet:

I preach of nothing but of covetise. Therefore my theme is yet, and ever was, – Radix malorum est cupiditas. Thus can I preach against the same vice Which that I use, and that is avarice. But though myself be guilty in that sin, Yet can I maken other folk to twin From avarice, and sore them repent. But that is not my principal intent; I preache nothing but for covetise. Of this mattere it ought enough suffice.

I should probably attempt a translation:

I preach only against covetousness. Therefore, my theme is yet and ever was, The love of money is the root of all evil. (Radix malorum est cupiditas.) I can preach against the same vice That I am guilty of, and that is greed (avarice). Even though I myself am guilty of that sin, I can help others “depart” From greed, and repent. But that is not what I primarily intend to do; I preach only against covetousness. And that should be enough.

He even attributes the casting out of Adam and Eve to greed:

O gluttony, full of all cursedness; O cause first of our confusion, Original of our damnation, Till Christ had bought us with his blood again!

As a side note: I so enjoyed studying this book in school. We had a teacher who would get up in front of the class with her book and perform for us. Her enjoyment of it was infectious -for me anyway. She was the laughing stock for most of the rest of the class. I never forgot the lessons I learned from this tale of a “pardoner” – a kind of lay preacher who scored money in return for pardoning people’s confessed sins – and I had always promised myself to read the balance of the Canterbury Tales.

But I digress, my point was that even the medieval authors wrote about greed which says to me that it has been an issue for humankind for as long as we have existed. While it’s existence may never be truly stomped out, we can individually ensure we watch ourselves for the signs and keep them in check.

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I have to admit, lust is not a topic I know a lot about. According to Wikipedia, the origins of the word date back to the 15th Century when the list of the 7 deadly sins requiring forgiveness was compiled. Lust does not only refer to a strong sexual desire, it is also used to denote strong desire or craving for just about anything. Example: “4. ardent enthusiasm; zest; relish: an enviable lust for life.” from dictionary.com

It’s funny how my list of the 5 most destructive emotions compares to the 7 deadliest sins:

• wrath (in my list, anger)
• greed
• sloth (not in my list)
• pride (not in my list)
• lust
• envy (not in my list)
• gluttony (not in my list)

Sloth, pride, envy and gluttony I don’t see as emotions and so I won’t even touch on those. And I will eventually touch on 2 others that aren’t presented here (Fear and Hate).

Lust has proven to be at the foundation of the demise of many a relationship. I am sure that Mike Tyson is thinking he should have had a better hold on his lust that night. And while he didn’t have a marriage destroyed by his actions, I don’t think the relationships he had with his fans, his family, his management was quite the same afterwards. For certain, HE was not the same afterwards.

Frankly, unless you are lucky enough that the other person is as discreet (and as wanton) as yourself, and no one else catches wind of your tryst, lust is likely to make a big mess of everything.

I’ve heard stories of soldiers losing rank and pay, their wives and children, respect of their colleagues and family, all for a piece of tail in the field. In a couple of cases, the piece of tail eventually became the new wife. I don’t know how many of these cases actually turn out this way, and I certainly can’t imagine how many of those new wives think about it happening to them later on.

As a child, I heard many stories about such dalliances amongst my parents friends and acquaintances (overheard, is more like it actually). Two in particular always had me musing – because those 2 relationships remained intact when looking in from the outside. I can’t imagine what it might have been like for them on the inside, however.

Controlling it is a whole different ball-game, though. And I have no specific advice on that issue. I have been a victim of said lust on occasion. Granted, eating a pint of ice cream isn’t quite the relationship-breaking activity that I had in mind when I started writing this post.

Preaching about keeping the consequences in mind when tempted is all well and good, but how realistic is it? When it’s right there in front of you, and there is no immediate danger in just taking a bite, why on earth would you want to stop yourself?

The fact is, however: once you are aware of the consequences – and some can be dire – and STILL give in to the emotion, there really is no recourse. It’s a chance you’ve taken and there is no guarantee you won’t get caught. If you can manage a minute of rational thinking, you can avoid the dive down the cliff-face by realizing that the immediate gratification will be spoiled later when it’s time to face the consequences.

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I was tooling around on the blog here, looking over the layout and the links (I removed the links – they were way at the bottom of the page and making the page too long – I’ll have to fix that later on somehow), and I came across a post I made in December of 2007. I had titled it “Self Discovery” back then, because I had made a discovery about myself that was startling and .. troubling.

Simply put, my anger was usually as a direct result of the impression of being “dissed” … disrespected, ignored, bullied into silence, manhandled … imagined or real, they all resulted in me “yelling and throwing things”. And I realized also that:

…I am hurting the most when I am at my nastiest. It’s when I don’t want to break down and cry with humiliation and despair that I shout and break things and call people ugly, dark names. And it’s when I need the comfort and love the most, that I turn people away with the worst disdain and hate that I can summon.

Examples of situations such as these blaze through my mind. I am reminded of many a painful scene in which my imagined wrongs resulted in an alienation of people close to me. One man, in particular, could never understand this trait of mine and his response was just as destructive and we would end up fighting for days, no end in sight, many nasty words traded and me eventually breaking into tears because something hateful eventually gets said. There were far more issues at work in that situation that made it fail, of course, but the anger is what I remember the most.

If it is one thing I have learned from my now-husband, it is that no matter how angry you may get because of some wrongdoing – imagined or real – it is of the utmost importance to ensure that the anger is expressed within a secure environment. You can tolerate a great deal of yelling and storming and scowls once you are secure in knowing the person who is yelling at you loves you, cares for you and would do absolutely nothing to hurt you.

Anger in and of itself is not destructive, it is the expression of that anger that kills. It kills love, it kills interest … slowly, over time, it erodes everything positive and you are left wondering why you lingered in the first place.

Honestly, one of the most difficult things to do in life is to be able to tell someone “I love you, but I am SO angry with you right now” without yelling it. Even having recognized this, I still have difficulty expressing my anger in positive ways. I still employ the “I can’t talk right now. I’ll talk about it later when I’m not so angry” ploy frequently. And I also still have to reinforce the positive on occasion: “I know I sound like I don’t like you when I yell, and I am sorry. I am trying to control that.”

It certainly isn’t a lesson learned or put into practice overnight, but the effort to do so makes a world of difference. Relationships are fragile things – it doesn’t take much negative emotion to shatter them. Pour enough positive to dilute the negative or obscure it completely helps keep them flourishing.

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I joined Twitter in April of 2007 for no other reason than it was the newest geek attraction on the block and I wanted in on it – just to see what it was, how it worked. I had no ideas of how I would use it, or how it might help me. I joined for the sake of it.

Today I realize that it was one of the best things I could have done. While I use twitter to put my voice (small though it may be) out there, it has also become one of my primary news feeds and a means of staying in touch with my Jamaican roots.

The first time Twitter proved itself invaluable was on the morning of April 17th 2008: I sat at my desk in my parents home in Kingston, Jamaica, sleepless as usual and geeking-out as I like to do and happened to see one of my twitter friends on the other side of the island tweet about the disastrous rain that her town had been having all night. Ocho Rios was so badly flooded that night, that roads and homes had been literally washed out to sea. And while the local news media had heard nothing about it, I was getting up-to-the-minute updates via Twitter.

While twitter is not by any means the definitive source of news of any kind, it certainly provides summarized versions of the news. Most twitter users will make a short statement followed by a link to a longer article about the item … assuming, of course, there is more to say.

I watched Twitter on the afternoon of November 5th 2009, just after the Fort Hood shootings occurred and was spurred into action because of the panic that I read in every single tweet related to the incident. I realized that people all over the world were hearing scant details about the shootings. What with the panic and speculation and assumptions being spread by twitter on it’s own, I was scared that my mother hearing the news from any source, might be worried sick. It made me pick up my phone and call her – well TRY to call her considering the cell network was so clogged the entire afternoon that I could scarcely get a call to complete.

You see, I knew about the shootings before it hit the airwaves (there’s that inside info source reference again without qualification – let’s just say I know an MP ) and it never once occurred to me that there were people who wouldn’t have known and who would want to know the extent. Once my mother (and hubby’s mother) was called, I started tweeting myself. I needed to be a voice among the many saying that there were some people on post who were fine and safe and that it wasn’t world war III and that as far as I knew, the situation was under control – all f—ed up, but under control.

More recently, it was my “Twitter peeps” who first alerted me to the burning of the J. Wray and Nephew warehouse in Kingston, Jamaica on December 1st 2009. The thing about this event was not so much the “burning of the rum” as most people seemed to have been saying, but the potential for this fire to spread and take with it half of the industrial district in Kingston considering drought conditions at the time.

What amazes me most about Twitter is the timeliness of the updates. Quite frequently I am telling my parents (who aren’t plugged in) about things that have happened before they hear – and they are right there in Jamaica where it all happens.

On top of all that, Twitter is also where I go to get the latest in tech news and reviews – Mashable (for the latest and greatest in the social-networking world) and TUAW (for all things unofficially Apple/Mac) in particular are sites that I follow on Twitter.

Twitter is where I keep up with my friends digital blurbs about stuff they’re doing, reading, seeing, experiencing, wishing for, dreaming of … and while I wouldn’t suggest everybody use Twitter as the sole means of keeping in touch, I like it because it helps me keep in touch along with my many other means.

It’s like me: my blog here is where I ramble long-windedly about stuff like Twitter; Tumblr is where I ramble less long-windedly about stuff I see or read; and Twitter is where I blurt out the short shorts (including links to my blog and Tumblr) – my conglomerate.

How do you use Twitter?

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