The Social Network Vortex

I have long been a social networking curmudgeon; I maintain that myspace is blogging for lazy people that are easily distracted by funny pictures. Myspace is to excellent online content as text messaging is to literary classics.
Facebook attempts to be the less childish version of myspace by requiring some sort of collegiate affiliation…and we all know how mature and intellectual college students are.
At work I am surrounded by recently graduated college students that are constantly checking their myspace pages and their facebook friends networks and it all seems like a digital version of junior high, where being loosely affiliated with a desirable and influential “cool kid” will somehow rub off on you via osmosis and you will become cooler by association. I can’t help but get the feeling that all that “friending” is just delusional attempts by lonely geeks to establish an affiliation, any affiliation with anyone. Case in point--I read something I found amusing so I link to it and now permanently link to Web2.Oh..really, although it would be a better example if I "friended" him from a social network.
I’ve wondered aloud how pointless all this interactive content creation is and if you are really feeling like wasting a few minutes—read Joe Rago’s column, “The Blog Mob: Written by fools to be read by imbeciles” that ran in the Wall Street Journal last year.
Actually, if you REALLY feel like wasting time take a mindless 6 degrees blog journey---it's easy. First you go to a blog of someone you know, find a link to someone else's blog, repeat until you are at least 6 degrees of seperation from the original blog, and see what you find. Most likely mindless drivel, like my blog but occasionally you will stumble on to something truly bizarre.
Craig Stoltz talks about having too many networks and too many friend groups and too many blogs and too many rss feeds etc...here.