tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post7545933234890386051..comments2024-03-18T10:29:46.055+00:00Comments on Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff: Handle With CareKen Armstronghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-39647213050440606382017-09-13T20:18:30.574+01:002017-09-13T20:18:30.574+01:00Thanks for the article, Jim, I'll deffo have a...Thanks for the article, Jim, I'll deffo have a read of that. It's funny how you would think you have so little to come back with when you're an Ace Writer, that's better than a poxy BMW any day. And like your wife's post, it gives them a nudge onward and it's the bloody least you could do. ;)<br />Kennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-43386364417393724812017-09-11T05:15:26.372+01:002017-09-11T05:15:26.372+01:00Every time I open up Facebook, which is the only s...Every time I open up Facebook, which is the only social network I subscribe to having left Twitter a few months back, I’m struck by how unnatural it is or, to be more accurate, it has become. It doesn’t know me. It has no idea who I am. I know that for a fact because if it had the slightest idea who I was or what matters to me it wouldn’t send me 95% of the crap it does. I recently went through my list of so-called friends and unfollowed a whole bunch of them and then I blocked a whole pile of sites, mostly political ones. That helped. But I still don’t really get why I insist on logging in every day. What exactly am I looking for? What I should probably do is unfriend everyone who didn’t comment on my last blog post, the whole lot. I know I joked about having a dozen followers but I wasn’t far off the mark. Who needs more than a dozen friends? Who even has time for a dozen friends? <br /><br />I think it’s a shame that people measure their personal worth using such a faulty barometer. My wife, for example, chides me now and again for not liking her posts to which I usually reply, “I’m sitting beside you and I told you I like it/am proud of you/think you’re clever. Why do I need to like everything you post?” Well, you know as well as I do why. Because Facebook’s a machine and you have to play by its rules or you’re on a hiding to nothing. <br /><br />As you know I rarely post on Facebook and I wish all my friends thought a bit before they did: <i>What do I really have to say to the world today? No, I mean, really.</i> Me, I don’t have much. I have a friend at the moment who’s doing a hundred day challenge and every day we get a progress report and a photo. You and I don’t do that. We write our books and plays and when they’re ready we tell the world or stick them in a drawer and lick our wounds. It’s like the quote attributed to Oscar Wilde—“I spent all morning taking out a comma and all afternoon putting it back in again”—who would’ve loved Twitter I have no doubt and we get the joke but, seriously, there have been days where I’ve opened up my poetry folder and changed a word or two in a poem and that’s all the work I get done that day. Who cares? They don’t have time for the finished product. Why burden them further by trying to include them in the process?<br /><br />I’m not an effusive person. I’m not especially negative but it’s hard for me to blow my own trumpet. For me the most depressing thing about Facebook—and I imagine the more friends you have the worse it gets—is that you’re continually hearing about other people’s successes and you have nothing to come back with. That was why I let my best friend Tom go. Because every time we met up all he could talk about were his achievements—we went here, we bought this, we saw that, we’re replacing this, we’re upgrading that—and bully for him. He drove a BMW (second top of the range—he explained why but I didn’t care) and I drove a bottom of the range <a href="http://i28.servimg.com/u/f28/12/58/48/23/dscf6214.jpg" rel="nofollow">Talbot Samba</a>. I do understand why material success was so important to him and if I’d had a dad like he had I might’ve been the same (if Tom borrowed the family car his dad charged him for petrol <i>and depreciation</i>) but that wasn’t me and that’s never been me.<br /><br />If you’re interested in reading it there’s a very recent article entitled <a href="https://blog.bufferapp.com/psychology-of-facebook" rel="nofollow">The Secret Psychology of Facebook: Why We Like, Share, Comment and Keep Coming Back</a>. Lots of charts and links.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-6230178774905416472017-09-10T13:40:30.727+01:002017-09-10T13:40:30.727+01:00Bye, Fran, thanks for dropping by. Your outlook so...Bye, Fran, thanks for dropping by. Your outlook sounds entirely sensible to me. Ken Armstronghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-15639801547733120992017-09-10T13:00:16.206+01:002017-09-10T13:00:16.206+01:00Yes to all the above. Facebook really annoys me an...Yes to all the above. Facebook really annoys me and Twitter disappoints me, I thought it was something that I could look at in my own 'neutral' way. When Twitter introduced photos, as interesting as some of them are, it changed the easy way you could skim through many tweets. <br /><br />We all have limited time and have to edit what we look at. It's several months now since I engaged in forums where your time is swallowed whole. I also rarely comment on blogs, it's not that I have nothing to say, it's maintaining that perspective on time. So... byeee! <br /><br />FranFranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06675807932843211827noreply@blogger.com