The bearded lady is never behind the curtain ...

As the internet turns the world into short attention span theater I find myself juggling multiple outlets for short attention span creating. I have a livejournal, for the most part blocked off from the rest of the world and connected to nonlocal friends. I've puzzled over the 'artist's blog' and kept one since 2003; now I've rolled it into my own website.

Started playing with Twitter, which is turning out to be a heck of a lot of fun. I'm more of a conceptwitter person than telling the (illusion of) the world where I am all the time. My vox blog, the remnant of an artist blog, has become snippets or clippings of flickr photos, tweets, and links. mySpace? Yeah, its nice to go down to that dive bar once a week for the noise and sleaze, strange bands coming up and humping my leg for attention.

With its recent redesigns, Facebook became a combination of mySpace and Twitter. Much noisier, visually, but, its popularity means i've gotten back in touch with some people who I wanted to reconnect with.

Now, to the point of this post.

I can't stand the people who use social networks to pimp themselves constantly. Every tweet or every FB status post is a link to something they've done, or something they are doing.

Granted I'll post a link to this thing on Facebook. Its about proportion. You gotta give something, not be that hand out there begging for clickthroughs.

When people do this, they are being a non-profit organization that only talks to its members to sqeeze them for more money. This becomes very easy to ignore.

Be a beacon of content.

Don't be a series of promises that the content will somehow be there behind another door that you want me to open. I know you want me to click there. The constant stream of tiny URLs tells me you value the clickthrough more than giving me content - you value what I have to give you (my attention) more than what you have to give me (your content).

Maybe you want the control of making me look at your content on your terms. Not interested.

The internet means tolerating hucksters, viruses, popups. The carnival inside my computer, the cost of a click is only my time. You shout and beckon with empty invitations. The bearded lady is never there.

Don't be surprised if I unfriend you, or stop following.