I hate Twitter. It’s rather boring, does not have a lot of options, is not terribly user friendly, and the site goes down frequently. I’m not a huge fan of Myspace or Facebook either, but honestly they do help me keep up with contacts and can be amusing at times. Sarcascio sent me a new link yesterday — Plurk.com. I’m curious how they came up with the name. It somehow makes me think of dropping a wad of silly putty into a big puddle. But anyway, it’s a website similar to Twitter, only it’s color coordinated and has an interesting layout. I’m tolerating this one for a little while. Supposedly the Plurk community is more welcoming and interesting than Twitter, but I’m not sure how true that really is.

Yesterday, Mr. Sarcascio brought up the idea that we may be too closely connected because of all these social networking sites. I think people are getting a false sense of closeness because of them. Not a lot seems personal anymore even though we communicate with people more often. We sometimes lack physical interaction because of these things. However, to some degree, I agree that we are too closely connected, and we take advantage of having people just a text, IM, phone call, email, or microblog away. [I say this, yet I love my blog and will admit to using email and text way more often than calling someone or sitting down to coffee, unfortunately.]

But whatever happened to good old fashion pen pals? I LOVE getting real mail, yet nobody ever sends postcards or letters anymore. Actually, I even get excited when I get comments on here or an email that has a personal letter in it and not just some forwarded chain letter or photos of puppies or spam. We seriously need to bring back letter writing, in my opinion.

Despite those drawbacks, we’ve opened up new avenues to be able to meet new people and discover new things that were never before available to us. For instance, there was a group on Facebook created a few days ago for future Baylor law students who will be starting in the spring. I’ve already been introduced to and communicated with a handful of my future comrades. This is not to mention the Baylor blog world that I’ve recently been introduced to.

So is it a good thing or a bad thing? Probably both. I think there’s a balance we will have to find.

Regardless, this Plurk thing is actually kind of interesting. If anyone joins, let me know, and I’ll add you as a friend. Right now it’s rather lonely and getting boring very quickly. Colors and smiley faces can only amuse me for so long.