It’s January 2nd, the last day of vacation before myself and my family plunge into our regular schedule of school, work and a list of activities that would make an unattached bachelor cower, rocking and shivering in a corner. And so, having some “free” time, and knowing that the tires on our family van are so tread worn that a stray tic tac on the road could result in a blow out (On a side note, I agree with my wife that a tire sale should not be advertised as a blowout special), I journeyed out first thing this morning to a local tire dealer. Unfortunately, my perception that I am the only person on the planet in need of tires who happens to have a day off for such activity met the brick wall of reality. This is a wall I continually stumble into and each time I am surprised, not having any recollection that this just happened last week. I believe my children’s hamsters learn faster from experience.
With my tires ordered and two hours on my hands with no where to go, it occurred to me that I could check into Foursquare! I’m at a totally new place, so that will gain me bonus points, not to mention the chance at some mystery badge to add to my collection! But, having plenty of time to think about it, it occurred to me that I have no worthwhile reason whatsoever to “check in.”
Social media is all about sharing, but as social networks have matured, we have realized that sharing every minute detail of our daily lives is boring, and quite simply, no one cares. The most used and simple example is food posts. Nobody cares if I had bacon and eggs for breakfast. I don’t even care. It’s not as if I want to make the commitment to post each and every meal and then after years of collecting data, pull all of this information out so that I can discover my proclivity towards English muffins and my avoidance of French toast.
Foursquare is the ultimate in breakfast posts. Except for a handful of people who spend every waking moment traveling to interesting and amazing places, most of us regular folk do horrendously boring tasks and when we aren’t doing those, we’re at home or work. For example, buying tires. Or grocery shopping. Or picking up the kids from school. You could post on Twitter every time to go to sleep. “Well, it’s off to bed again for the 13,505th time. Gonna be a wild ride!” Or when you go the the bathroom on Facebook, “I just shat the most enormous poop log in my life!”. Or when you’re buying tires “Tires sure are bald. Gonna get those totally rad Michelins!”.
No one cares that I’m at the tire store, or that my tires are bald, or that I’m being a responsible adult by replacing them. I don’t even care. Once I have the new tires, I’ll move on to my next unexciting task. I will forget about tires. I will forget the two hours spent sitting around the tire store, drinking bad coffee. I will never, ever think to myself, “I wish I could tabulate all of the times in my life I replaced my tires and at which locations.” And none of my friends, followers, subscribers, pluskateers or electron buddies will enjoy or benefit from knowing my current location. In the end, while its so easy to share our lives at the speed of light, it turns out that little we do is actually worth sharing. Perhaps in the long run, this will make us better, motivating us toward a more meaningful life. For now, I’m off to get a sandwich.