personality disorder

so lately i'm getting lost in the shuffle of my own life. you could call it living. that's how i prefer to look at it. i know one scary day, devices might be fused with our bodies so that reflections, streams of consciousness, fleeting lapses of genius, and general thoughts will be poured into files and edited to become content. instantaneous blogging, twittering, facebooking, and whoring ourselves out! the good thing about now is you can get lost in life and actually consider it a good thing.

bullshit, man. i'm trying to justify ignoring this blog again, covering up for my general apathy and a case of writer's block. whatever...

as you might know, my wife is in the web 2.0/social media space. we have terrific conversations, usually over a bottle (maybe 2) of wine and a few sneaky cigarettes after the kids are in bed, about this new frontier and its population, growing at a rate that you might as well strike the "new" label there. i am fascinated by the sociological aspects of all this. what really grabs me at the moment is how it enables split personality disorders across the globe.

alert: generalizations dead ahead.

when you read a blog (or other media), do you assume the person behind the curtain is consistent with what you glean from the content or the brand? when i got into this, i assumed as much. then i began to know or know about other bloggers, and it occurred to me that so many out there are really nailing it with the smoke and mirrors, promoting their brands that don't seem to match up with the real mccoy. for instance, there's this social media god at my wife's firm who has his virtual feet kissed 24/7 in the world of web 2.0 these days. to everyone out there buying in, he's fantastic, wonderful. in real life he's a prick. then there's a woman who i really like in person when i see her on occasion, but i borderline loathe her social media persona. i can cite several other examples of inconsistency, but you get the point.

much of it's in the name of self promotion, which sometimes frightens me. i am so curious about people who devote so much time and energy to putting themselves out there, endlessly in search of new friends or networks. "star fuckers" is what my wife calls them. to me it's exhausting and makes me wonder about whether the real world of flesh and blood has become that much of a drag. can our true selves be so boring that we need virtual alter egos to feel alive? it's possible, really.

i have to acknowledge a bit of jealousy on my part. it's like when i drive down rock creek parkway and see joggers or bikers everywhere within eye sight, i sort of assume they are all young, maybe single, getting their workout on before a night on the town, and i have a fleeting "grass is greener" moment. so when i see how active and dialed in star fuckers are in the new media world, you could say i wish i had that much time on my hands to flex my mind and soul.

maybe i'm just in the midst of an online identity crisis. or is the crisis in my real life? i guess i should send out an SOS via twitter and see if my "friends" can throw me a lifeline. those venues do seem to be where the answers are coming from lately, yes?