One of the amusing features of getting old is that it seems to take longer and longer to become aware of and take up the emerging cultural trends of the day. My first recallection of this was when the whole “Bling” phenomenon passed me by for about 5 months before I became aware of it (not that that really constituted a big loss for me, or the rest of society for that matter).
I have generally put it down to the fact that you spend all day working and not randomly surfing the net or gossiping with vacuous 15 year old girls (who unfortunately seem to originate and perpetuate many of these “trends”).
As a result I have been amused to realise that after several years of reading about them and hearing everyone go on about how it’s the new hot thing, I finally seem to “get” the internet phenomenons of Youtube and Facebook.
I had in the past looked at a few videos on youtube, but had never gone beyond linking in to look at a specific video, and then leaving again. I just didn’t get the whole fun of jumping from video to tenuously related video and seeing where it took me, or watching (usually only parts of) unbelievably bad video blogs. Perhaps its the acquisition of higher speed broadband that has changed it for me (less loading lag time) but I’ve now found quite a lot of fun in link-surfing around Youtube. I’ve also decided that it’s a great system for putting video on my blog (as seen recently in my Youtube Stumbles regarding Harry Potter) without having to bother with setting up my own streaming video server – watch for more videos of Jack soon.
Facebook also was something I saw people using and didn’t get. I couldn’t see the point. I could email people quite adequately already, why would I need to do it through a website for everyone else to see as well? But in a fit of curiosity a few weeks back I signed up and now I can’t seem to go 12 hours without checking whether I’ve got new friends, or new photos have been added, or someone’s changed their status, or written on my wall. It’s unbelievably compulsive. It also makes sitting in my study being boring and reading anatomy seem immensely less socially isolating than it was only a month ago.
So it’s only taken me a few years to get with the program, but I’m finally here.
If you are using facebook as well and want to add me as a friend, you should be able to locate me with either my gmail or hotmail addresses.