For the past week, a lot of my Twitter followers have noted that I’ve been M.I.A. (missing in action). And I have. To be honest, I’ve gotten a little bored with socializing online. That’s not to say I’m tired of talking to my friends online. I touched basis with Cyndy (a.k.a. the other Louis Gray) just last night. Last week, I had not one but two conversations with my sexy-man/partner in crime Chris Miller. However, all of these conversations took place offline.
Let me state beforehand that I find this post a little difficult to write. How can you elaborate on a sentence that explains it all: I’m sick of socializing online! It’s not the entire online social experience that I’m sick of though. It’s different elements that are starting to either bore me or annoy me.
This post was inspired by Is Social Over-Hyped?
Repetitive Conversations
A friend of mine once asked my why I kept posting about the same service over and over (Twitter was that service). I told her because there were various aspects of the service that I felt were unexplored that I could add some input to……and I needed something to post about. However, her question has been haunting me lately because our little bubble of web 2.0, silicon valley, and social media can get pretty repetitive.
I couldn’t write about a different service because there was nothing out that was of interest to me. On the other hand, there weren’t many meaningful discussions to contribute to either. Either I had nothing to say about the subject, or what I was thinking had already been said. There’s no point in rehashing a point just for the sake of saying something different. This is how I’ve been feeling lately.
Reading & Blogging Became A Chore
I’ve let my unread articles in Google Reader stack up to ridiculous amounts for the past few weeks. I’m sick of reading. It’s becoming a chore that I’d rather put off for various reason.
- There’s nothing new of interest.
- The conversations are all the same.
- I don’t feel like searching for new content.
I think I may be discovering that I’m one of those people that doesn’t like a lot of order. I like things to switch up every now and again. However, the section of the blogosphere that I’m interested in has a hit a plateau and in turn, so has my blogging. Once again, it’s all too repetitive to the point of tedium.
Plateau in Innovation and Creation
All the latest sites and services are all the same to me. Clones. Clones that do one feature better than the original. Clones that don’t have any of the features that the original has. Clones that are playing catch-up and clones that should have never seen the light of day because the original was a dumb idea to begin with. There’s nothing to talk about because there really isn’t any “real”" news. Innovation is at an all time low and we’re all suckers for it because something is better than nothing. Well, screw that!
A Hiatus on the Horizon?
No, I won’t be taking a hiatus. I still love this too much. However, content from SheGeeks will be on the slow side. I refuse to post just for the sake of posting. I want to add something new, if not original to the conversation. I want to discuss something different, something exciting, something….moving. That’s how FriendFeed and Twitter were when I first discovered them: exciting and moving. Where are the services, theories, and concepts that can accomplish that same feeling, while being of interest to me?
Last night, 
Those people in the chatroom were more annoying than anything because it prevented you all from conversing with Wayne and I. However, they didn’t personally affect me. I really appreciate you all speaking out. I appreciate the support and knowing that you were more disgusted than I was. I guess I’m used to it and I’ve seen much worse in my life. Honestly, I was surprised to see your posts because I had no intentions of making a similar posting. Why? It’s just not a new phenomenon for me.
Generation Y are the types of users that can help make new technologies more mainstream. One can even argue that to some extent, we make up the majority of mainstream. We’re the more narcissistic users. We’re the supposedly savvy users of the web. Yet, we’re also the ones who have yet to learn how to properly and effectively user new technologies. We’re the ones that depend on Wikipedia for our homework, yet do not know how to effectively use Google Scholar to our advantage. We have a million resources at our fingertips. We’re the ones that will pick one or two and not bother to explore the others. We just might be the laziest web users of all time.
Generation Y is normally well informed of the latest gadgets. We switch cellphones every chance we get. We’re switching from PC’s to Linux and Macbooks. We have GPS in our cars and upgrade our stereo systems about as much as we change clothes. However, when it comes to technologies, most of us are at a loss.
Ask us about IMAP and we’ll give you the most confused look. Throw out a music codec outside of MP3 such as OGG Vorbis, or ask Gen Y what LAME is. Can you speak in plain English please? DataPortability, OpenID, OAuth, APML? RSS, OMPL? We’ll probably ask if that has anything to do with HTML. These are technologies that early adopters are pushing for 
It seems the perpetration of Generation Y being up on the latest technologies is a bit skewed. We’re more up on the latest gadgets (hardware). The technologies (software) that power the gadgets that we use, we honestly have no clue about them. While we may also be savvy at 
Don’t ask any of us what these things mean. Don’t tell us that a social network is part of social media which is part of the social web. We most likely don’t even care, but we should! The social web is the wave that we’ll be riding in the future. We know brands like Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. However, we have no clue about Google’s OpenSocial. Hell, I barely have a clue to what exactly it’s supposed to be. We know about Youtube, but not Veoh, Vimeo, or Qik. Twitter? Barely a blip on our radar and I do mean barely! Everything we know about the Social Web, was over for early adopters in 2007, with the exception of Facebook. We can definitely claim that.
Our future is already here and wholeheartedly involves the use of these services and applications. Part of our ignorance could be due to that fact that we only see what’s popular, when it hits mainstream. We hop from network to network based on the recommendation of our friends. To some extent, early adopters do the exact same. However, while they’re bouncing from the latest to the next potential hit, Generation Y ping-pongs back and forth between a bubble of networks, which we rarely venture outside of.
Laziness and pride put us behind more than anything else (except possibly games and sleep). If you look at the age of the early adopter crowd you’ll see that people like Scoble, Stowe Boyd, Dave Winer, Guy Kawasaki are not “young bucks”. Hell, get off the usual A-list train for a second. Those who are also pushing Friendfeed, Twitter, various RSS Readers, and social aggregators are over the age of 35 too.
I’m 20. My mom is 40. My dad is…over 40. The aforementioned folks that are old enough to be my parents. Their old enough to be my friend’s parents. Would you really want to learn about the web from your parents, who didn’t even grow up with the internet? What the hell do they know? That’s our mentality. That’s our pride. In our heads, the internet is our birthright. If my mom tries to show me anything on the internet you can bet your bottom dollar that I probably won’t listen. What does she know? If we’re taking the early adopter crowd into perspective, then apparently a lot more than I do!
On the other hand, future technologies and services are extremely complicated, time consuming, and not always productive. We’re way too lazy to want organize these things ourselves. We’re glad you guys are taking the time to do it because it would take us a lot longer to get it done. There’s so much to learn and explore. Yet, we just want whatever’s going to get things done the quickest. We don’t even mind if it’s dirty, as long as it’s done!
There’s way too much hype being placed on Generation Y. Sure we’re savvy, but we’re also clueless and most of us don’t care to do the research. We’re waiting for these things to come to us while early adopters are going to them. We’re weren’t the first on the web, though we pretend to be. Who invented the internet? Puh-leeze! That’s a pop quiz that this generational “wave” would drown in.
Since we feel that the internet was our birthright, I think we should start investing the time to learn the both the history and the future of it. We need to set aside our pride, clean up our rooms, and get just as involved on the web as we are in politics, economics, and the environment. One thing is definitely clear to me: Generation Y has no clue about the future of the web and the perpetration that we do needs to stop. 
