500 Channels and There is Nothing On, 700 Friends and No One Shows
My twitter pal Kay Ballard shared this link with me on this guy who has 700 friends on face book, invites them all to a party and only one person shows. It reminded me of the lament from 15 or so years ago how there were 500 channels now on cable TV and there was nothing on. Why has it become a sign of your popularity how many people you have following you on facebook and twitter? Is this really any better than having 500 stations to choose from on the TV when really there is no entertaining content there?
For some reason Kay got an invite from me to join Kwippy (I didn’t send it – some how this service got my twitter list and invited everyone on it). Kay replied that she would have rather been invited to dinner. So I invited my entire twitter list to dinner – I do afterall have 1600 pounds of lean beef that I need to consume (it is going to a food bank soon). I did not get one response on my invitiation to dinner – yet got five responses thanking me for the invite to join Kwippy.
If we want interesting things to watch on cable, and we want people to come to our parties, we have to start creating interesting things to watch and have to start showing up at other people’s parties. Dare I say, I don’t think this will happen if you sit behind a computer, alone, all day long.
Got to run, my friend (in real life) Monica just showed up and we are heading to the pool.
October 27th, 2008 at 9:36 am
WOW – I was having a similar conversation with my neice about “popularity”. She wanted to fill up her IM and Facebook with lots of friends so she’d be “popular”….not that many of those folks on her list even knew her. I asked her what she thought “popular” meant; what made kids popular and she said “ya know…the ones with 100’s of friends on IM and MySPace, and ya’ know, the mean girls like in that movie” I told her I thought it popular meant not only well known but also well liked….
You can have 1000 friends on myspace but that doesn’t mean you’re very nice or very well liked.
SO, if you have 50 friends who really like you (or 50 channels that really provide good entertainment) vs 1000s that provide nothing….which one is more popular??
October 27th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I’m fine with even 1 friend that I can count on to do fun things with on a Saturday night. Who cares about the 500 channels on the TV or the 1000 friends on Facebook if I’m sitting home alone on a Saturday night wondering where all the action is.