I have a confession to make. I delete all my real-name comments and likes from many of my social accounts.
I create posts. I like things. I comment on other’s posts. But within 24 hours — I delete them.
There’s something about gifting my personal IP, my thoughts and opinions and such to the likes of google or facebook or twitter.
And here’s why I mention this: People hate that I do this.
People, apparently, feel entitled to some sort of persistence model regarding everything I might say or approve of. They think me deleting my comments from their posts violates their sense of continuity regarding their social personas. BAH! I say.
If we have a conversation on the phone, or face to face, or yelling across the canyon will either of us have recorded for posterity that conversation? Of course not. We talked, we exchanged views, and now those words are lost to the ether. Should we mourn those words? Those unpersisted trackings of our repartee? Of course not. And that’s the way I view my communications on my real-name social presence.
And of course they get even more pissed off when I post something and they comment on it and then a day later the entire conversation and post are vanished into the never-never.
“Why did you delete that article?” they ask. Hey, I’m modeling the entropy of the universe. Get used to it.
My netdonym social presence? Like here? Ah, who cares, it’s fun to gather a following of anonymous people’s likes and dislikes. I don’t know if you use your real name or not. I wouldn’t. I mean, I do, but only for VERY SPECIFIC content that I want associated with me personally.
The nonsense I post here? Me, my radicalized self and all the left-leaning libertarian loony-toons fodder I spew out? Well, it’s just a gathering ground for poisonous mushrooms. Hmm, anyone for some toadstool stew?
Anonymole - apocryphal agitators 
You copying me?
LikeLike
Copying what? The fact that I’m using English with which to write? Guilty. Other than that, no idea to what you’re referring.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Just a joke.
LikeLiked by 1 person
A thought does come to mind though with that notion: with hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of blog posts being written everyday, imagine the duplication!
I’d hate to be an actual journalist trying to compete out there with topical, poignant, catchy material.
One couldn’t help but copy others, in theme and content if not style sometimes.
They say mimicry is flattery, but not if it cuts into one’s paycheck, eh?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Exactly!
LikeLiked by 1 person
But isn’t this also a form of social media? And of course, your comments and articles are your own, yours to delete if you will
LikeLiked by 1 person
The point I’d hoped to make was that there are some folks to feel slighted when I erase what they apparently had some mysterious claim to. And then this, as one might expect, tends to curtail discussion (on said social sharing sites). “Well, if you’re going to DELETE what I tell you then why tell you at all?”
Which is strange, I thought, as isn’t this exactly how normal conversation works? Whispers in the wind…
LikeLiked by 1 person
Further…
Image if you write a physical letter and send it to me. I read it and burn it.
You then call me up and in our conversation find out that I did indeed receive, read and subsequently burn your letter.
Now, you could have written this letter, called me up and recited the letter over the phone.
Note that in both cases, I’ve received the exact same information from you.
In the second, you accept that the information are spoken words lost beyond our conversation. But in the first – the fact that I destroyed those same words, and that the informational situations are now identical — the relational situations are not.
You no doubt felt some small hurt learning that I’d burned your letter, no?
Why? I don’t know the answer but would surmise that the injury exists nonetheless.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah well, it’s nice to know that someone kept your letter. However, if they went through the hassle of burning it, that’s kind of interesting too
LikeLiked by 1 person
Bah, optimist! (grin)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Funny 😀 It annoys my family that I refuse to use Facebook at all, and as for Youtube; I often have something to add in the Comments box but refrain from doing so because I’m conscious of the mindless-twaddle-trail that gets left behind. I sometimes give up typing comments on here; I might type what I want to say and then think it doesn’t really add anything meaningful to the grand scheme of things so just close the page. I also delete my old posts here, just to keep things more relevant.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Indeed!
I got over the fb-phobia, and figure that many family members don’t really know how else to share stuff. But, yeah, I don’t share that way — and when I do, it’s just to get in front of their eyes for an hour. I refused to let the ZorkerBorg benefit from any content I might produce. If there’s one person I feel does NOT deserve his station — that would be him.
LikeLiked by 2 people
What a great thing. Sometimes I think about all the little comments dropped endlessly thru my life and now, the ones sent digitally, collected and arranged, could tell any story…. Truthful or not, in context or not. What strikes me suddenly funny is that I could be deleting them. And THAT had not occured until I read this article!
The things your articles cause me think are often quite foreign to me. Makes perfect sense, just hadn’t thought about it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll admit that were it not for the net, I’d most likely be some hermit writing senseless scribbles onto inside-out labels removed from canned peaches. Being able to bounce uncommon ideas off of the world is like a magnet to my crude iron-filings. Thanks for reading my crazy stuff.
LikeLiked by 1 person
There is a comment you made to my post Townie Guy that was much appreciated by a writer who calls himself Duke Miller, Tin hats.
I think you would enjoy his thoughts, ramblings, shorts, and philosophical observations.
Either way, very enjoyable.
MN
LikeLiked by 1 person