I enjoyed LiveJournal because sometimes I have fragments of ideas which are not ready to be an official article, but it is nice to be able to start giving the words shape. I also felt like I could actually get to know people on there. Like, if I met someone at a rock show, we could exchange info and continue getting to know one another. I was extremely bugged, however, when I started seeing people out at night and I’d ask them how they were and be told to read their LJ. Why bother leaving the house if you refuse to have a conversation? Over time, people started taking LJ more and more seriously. This meant that, first of all, that, if I complained about work on there, some dick would take it as uber-personally and big deal as if I had sent out a press release and posted “I had a hard day because blah blah” to every high traffic site I operate. Secondly, there started to be too many people on my LJ list for me to keep up with what everyone was up to. Most disappointingly, treating LJ as a publishing platform rather than a diary meant that other people started writing less and less personal entries and more and more press release-like entries which had more to do with how they wish to be perceived than who they truly are.

At first, I hated MySpace because it seemed like a service whose only application was to allow other people access to my Rolodex without having to say “thanks for the introduction”. Then I also hated MySpace because it seemed to pull audience from LJ, which I had enjoyed the interactivity of, and MySpace didn’t really seem to have any way to get to know people. MySpace is like this menu of people who seem like, in another life, I might have really enjoyed knowing them, but MySpace gives just enough of a taste to feel weird about people, without really enough to know them at all. Partly, MySpace is so terribly public that one really ought to keep anything private off there, but this means that there are always aspects of a person left off there which would be important to know if you were truly meeting them. And, if you are forthcoming with someone who has a popular MySpace account, you can’t trust that they will know to keep private things private, libel laws or no. Who wants to spend all their time in legal battles? It is easier to just be really private and closed off. I hired people to handle my MySpace accounts for me because MySpace filled me with such a deep keening sense of loneliness. There are certain sorts of MySpace messages, I enjoy answering personally. (If you got a message with my name signed to it, I wrote it.) For the most part, though, every time I’ve thought a Los Angeles person I met on there seemed like someone I’d want to know, they ended up digitally booty-calling me. Part of me thinks I should be flattered by this, as I generally am motivated to converse with people who are accomplished, intelligent, talented, creative, famous, etc. But it just makes me ache inside. Do human beings no longer meet in person for anything besides sex?

Then, one of the years I spoke at SXSW, the big interactive launch of the season was Twitter. Everyone was all a-twitter over this new ADD version of LiveJournal. Instead of having to read long transcripts of arguments someone had with their mom or extensive deconstructions of the merits of macaroni with and without cheese, Twitter only leaves room for 140 characters in a post. If you have a Blackberry or an iPhone or similar cell phone, it is easy to update your Twitter even while driving in traffic. (Not that I recommend this, as I’m pretty sure it might be illegal or dangerous or something most places.) Because of the SXSW launch and general tech community culture driving the initial Twitter world, I had mostly people I knew from that part of my life on my read list and I felt like I actually was getting to know some interesting and accomplished people a bit better on there, seeing cool links as news broke, and generally getting to enjoy a new Web 2.0 property. I’m not sure if there was a panel at the recent adult trade shows in Vegas where everyone was told that Twitter is great for interacting with fans or getting traffic or what, but I’ve recently had a couple hundred new people add me to their Twitter follow lists. Although early on, I just had my assistant add back all new follows on Twitter and I’d just remove the boring or annoying ones later, I now prefer to check out each new follow personally. This means that now, when I think of posting what delicious things I am consuming for breakfast (iced soy latte and smoked salmon on low salt sprouted grain bread), I feel guilty like I should really get on checking out all those new accounts which have expressed interest by following my account. Only then I have to wonder how many followed my Twitter because they are interested in me and how many followed because they want me to be interested in them? And, of course, I recently got to discover that 140 characters is not too few for someone to start drama, but it is too few to explain one’s point diplomatically enough to get them to chill.

Although I was an early adopter on Twitter, I came to Facebook late. Partly it had trouble with my name and partly I had to get alumni email stuff set up for it to be useful in finding former classmates. Plus the places in Germany, Belgium, Israel, and Switzerland where I went to school in my teen years were not listed and the system seemed to be set up for fewer high schools. Facebook tech support is impressively by far the most responsible and effective of any of the social networking sites and I eventually did get an account properly set up there. On Facebook, I used a different rule of thumb for friending people or approved friend requests: I only wanted friends on there who I would deliberately have a meal or a tasty beverage with. If the person is someone I’d be pleased to get a dinner or drinks invite from or a person I’d be likely to extend a dinner or drinks invite to, then I’d approve them. If the person is just someone who would like me to take their photo or who would only be interested in dining with me if I brought important (to them) or fuckable (by them) people with me, then that would be a no. I find it unfortunate that my morbid college friends can’t shut up about my two friends from that time period who died tragically. If the deaths of those two people saddens my living friends half as much as me, I’d expect they would want to think about it a bit less often than daily. My Facebook friend add process is slow because when a new person adds me who I want to add back, I like to write a personal note to them and I do keep up with my friends status feeds and such. I update my own Facebook status with Twitter and import notes from my LiveJournal, so my Facebook friends probably get a mildly more complete view. But tonight, I logged onto Facebook thinking that maybe I would do something sociable and just felt a wave of social anxiety. Although there are five or six pending requests on there I was really really looking forward to approving and interacting with, there were also a hundred I was kind of stumped by. Lots of women I’ve known have naturally changed their names. Lots of people I’ve known by fannish names or punk rock nicknames and I don’t recall what their mamma called them, even if I knew once. Remembering multiple names for every person becomes really hard once one has met enough people. I recognized some of the add requests as people I’ve photographed but don’t know and some as people who dated friends of friends of friends or who were otherwise tangentially part of social groups I was in. Not people I dislike at all, but not all people I’d be inclined to hang with if I were in town for a weekend or vice-versa. Some people ring a bell and I agonize over where I know them from, but don’t want to offend by asking. My time is so limited that I’d really like to have just one social platform where everyone on my list is someone who might actually care if I had a death in the family. Or at least enjoy getting coffee with me on a good day.

Actually, although I still minimally participate in LiveJournal, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook, I find that, for me, all the new Web 2.0 modes of interaction feel great for a few months and then feel kinda ache-inducing. If I’m so connected, why do I feel so disconnected? The only web interaction sites which tend to consistently be enjoyable for me are forums. This is why it is so important to me that the BlueBlod.net boards be a place where people from varied backgrounds can exchange different viewpoints in an intelligent and real way, without tonal BS bulletpoints, without flame wars, without being unable to back up what they say.

But, every once in a while, it just all fills me with such a deep keening sense of loneliness, I pine for the days when I used to just drop by friends’ houses and vice-versa, when it felt worth getting dressed up to go out, whether or not photos would be taken. I realize this is the internet age equivalent of longing for the times when people dressed up to go visit the town square. I remember my grandparents talking about country clubs taking the place of the town square or something along those lines that a child’s mind couldn’t quite grasp. A country club is too geographically local for today’s mobile world, though. I wish I could take a year off and just travel and write and eat right and visit people from different times in my life and different areas of my interests and see who I really connect or re-connect with and who is just a pleasant memory. The country club of Web 2.0 is just simultaneously overwhelming with the constant clamor of thousands of apparently potential friends and lonely with lack of anything real enough to feel . . . well, real.

BlueBlood.com will be finishing up 2008 with a celebratory balloons set of the lovely Voltaire, lensed by yours truly and Forrest Black. Nothing says “party” like balloons on a hot naked tattooed girl. Well, maybe other things say “party” like that, but balloons on a hot naked tattooed girl are still very festive. Blue Blood’s New Years gift to all of you is the opportunity to try a BlueBlood VIP membership for only $1 and, when you sign up, you will be given the option to add a membership to Erotic BPM as well, also for only a dollar.

My best NYE ever did involve a trip to Las Vegas where they blew up a building to celebrate the start of a fresh year. New Years Eve Vegas-style featured fireworks and dynamite and police and drunk people in the street and everything. Perhaps some contemplation was involved as well, but it’s hard to top that, even during subsequent Las Vegas NYEs. Although admittedly I frequently stay in on New Years or spend it with just a few close friends and family members. Ringing in the New Year and celebrating my birthday are primarily my bi-yearly personal performance evaluations. Basically, I like to use those dates as opportunities to reflect on how I am doing at achieving what I’d like to and I usually set goals on the New Year.

This New Years, I recommend avoiding a hangover and curling up with access to both all the BlueBlood VIP sites and ErotiBPM for $1 each. You can always have a champagne brunch tomorrow with what you saved. Just sign up on the BlueBlood.com sale page and check the box for EroticBPM when you enter your info. Never done an intro price this low before and probably never will again. Year long half price memberships are available too, so please resolve to check it all out in 2009.

So I’m recuperating from the corisone shot I mentioned last week. I asked my BlueBlood.net friends, my 60,000+ Blue Blood MySpace friends, and my LiveJournal friends. Apparently I have a lot of different site-specific friends. I was surprised to only get five responses on BlueBlood.net. In my personal journal, I received eleven responses, ten of which were from people I have interacted with extensively, ranging from interfaced with digitally a whole lot to stayed up late with at science fiction conventions to lived with, and nine of which were from people I know in real life in different cities. It is nice that the journaling service helps me keep in touch with people from different places and times in my life, although sometimes the chasms between the different folks on there seem odd, given that they all intersect with me.

I would have expected my personal journal to have had the most responses, given that it seems most likely that the folks on there would be the most interested in what is going on with me personally. Not how it went. More than 250 people on MySpace responded, including people I have known for many years, people I have just met, people I have made art with, people I have worked with, people I have partied with, people I’ve met once, people I hope to meet someday, and people who seemed interesting but I’ve never chatted with before. More than 250 MySpace friends were generous enough to share their experiences to make mine a more informed one. I was both stunned and touched. MySpace sure has gotten to be about 680 million times cooler since FOX bought it. At any rate, it seems that my friends who have received cortisone injections are most likely to be women who have worn extremely high heels and/or performed very vigorously onstage and men who have participated in some form of UFC-type fighting and/or performed very vigorously onstage. Your more traditional sports such as baseball, football, and gymnastics came in second place for both genders. I’m not sure what that says about the demographics of who I like. The general consensus of the general demographic seemed to be that cortisone shots are unmitigated hell to get but work magic for healing.

At any rate, when I went for the shot, I was scared and I brought the Mummy given to me by the wonderful artist Kristin Tercek of Cuddly Rigor Mortis. My doctor was entertained by the name of her company, but he told me I really didn’t need to worry and that he had a reputation for being good with a needle. I laughed nervously and he explained that there are three things which make it so a cortisone shot is not that awful. If I recall correctly, the three things were (1) spray the skin with topical anaesthetic but not an injected one, (2) use a very thin needle, and (3) don’t muck about. I asked him what he meant by don’t muck about. He explained that many doctors inject lidocaine or something similar to numb the area before they inject the cortisone, but he couldn’t see how two shots would hurt a lot less than one, and he suspected that many doctors did it that way because they lacked the experience and confidence to get in there quickly in the right spot and get out fast. A numb patient won’t notice the doctor feeling his way and a numb patient is likely to go overexert their injured area immediately afterwards.

I seriously get sick after getting blood drawn, so I was very nervous about the shot. It was totally nothing. The doctor was super fast and precise. It didn’t hurt at all. There was a peculiar burning sensation in my ankle for a while afterwards, but it was not painful, just odd. Afterwards the doctor said something about hoping he didn’t come across as arrogant. I told him that I’m just fine with my doctor being arrogant, especially when he is right.

Then me and Mummy went home to play with the awesome new Royal Gimp Kristin made for Blue Blood in Blue Blood purple.

So, in conclusion, I sure do like Kristin Tercek. I sure do like my doctor. I sure do like people who are accurately arrogant. My ankle hurts way more now than before the shot and I’m a little grumpy, but that is all apparently a normal precursor to feeling miraculously better. I just want to be able to go to the gym and drive like normal. And, fuck me, but I think I just may like MySpace.