Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
DSM-V Candidate
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2009 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
The pop-psych explanation goes: It's a disorder if it gets in the way of your life or if it's stopping you from doing things you want to do. Example:
"I have a problem: I hate advertising. Under most circumstances I would not consider this a problem, but I'm starting to think that my hatred of advertising is neurotic. I will go out of my way to avoid doing things that I want to do because of advertising."
So I used to think it was just a morally neutral and perfectly healthy quirk that I hated creating new accounts on new services. That's the main reason I'm not on Facebook or Twitter/identica or MySpace or Amazon or...[giant list at footnote 0]
Now, with Facebook and Twitter/identica, it's getting into "revelation that one does not own a cell phone" territory. And I'm missing out on parties and useful work-related gossip because of holding out. So I'll probably join those soon, and I am trying to figure out why I'm holding out.
Today I discovered that the This American Life stage show will be broadcast again, this Thursday, May 7th, and that three New York City theaters will host showings. I rather want to go! But I would rather use their phone system or physically go in person to the Clearview First and 62nd Cinemas (the only theater that isn't sold out) than set up a movietickets.com account and instantly buy a ticket online. I may end up letting the logistics of either option stop me from doing something I want to do.
I used to explain away my reluctance with a Mark Twain quote, "Beware of all enterprises that require a new set of clothes," and say that I beware of anything that requires a new username and password. But if I wanted to, I could use a digital keyring to keep track of my user/pass/site combos. Or a Sherlock Holmes-branded password notebook.
Maybe I'm just a late adopter. I also don't have a portable MP3 player or smartphone, even though I'd find them ridiculously useful. But I really enjoy being adventuresome in the food that I eat, or knowing about cutting-edge technology, or knowing about a cool band or author before the mainstream does.
So my cynical amateur self-diagnosis goes like this: I conflate minimalism with simplicity. I enjoy perceiving myself as nonconformist, and/so I eschew popular things just because they're popular. I join new networks not as an altruistic pioneer, but only when I can leech useful data off existing content providers. And I'm lazy.[1]
But my craving for self-validation (for being so punk and l33t that I'm not on Facebook, oi rock out) will soon lose out to my craving for validation from others (this social animal wants into the zoo!). So unless Mike Daisey convinces me otherwise tomorrow night, I'm probably getting on Facebook. And -- because -- so are you.
[0]...or eBay or PayPal or Pandora or Last.fm or Fandango or OKCupid or the iTunes music store or the BoingBoing comment boards or Advogato or Ohloh or Reddit or LibraryThing or Wikipedia or Ticketmaster or LiveJournal or Yelp or EggRadio or Yahoo/delicious/Flickr or cdBaby or Lulu/Createspace. (For Delicious, eBay, Amazon, BookMooch, cdBaby, Lulu/Createspace, and probably some other services I piggyback on Leonard's account. Maybe this implies that I really want to buy/give away physical goods and save interesting URLs to The Cloud but can't be bothered to initiate an account to do so.)
Counterpoint: I do have accounts with Google, AIM, Jabber, the Miro Guide, Meetup, Tor.com, GeekSpeakr, and LinkedIn, among others.
[1] There are probably less self-loathing explanations, but like short letters (and blog posts), those take longer to make. To make well, anyway.
Comments
Evan
03 May 2009, 19:42 p.m.
Brendan
http://www.xorph.com/
03 May 2009, 21:38 p.m.
Evan has a point.
You're probably better off calling than going to movietickets.com, as I seem to recall they charge a boldly stupid online purchase fee.
Holly
http://severalbees.com
04 May 2009, 6:49 a.m.
My problem with new services is a combination of embarrassment at what might be perceived as bandwagon-jumping, and conflicting feelings about username availability, thus:
1. I am fine with signing up to any number of new things if I am in time to get the username "holly", which I pretty much never am because it's obviously a common name.
(1a. Having the username "holly" is arguably a bad thing when it does happen, because it means that on a popular service I get password reset/reminder emails approximately weekly when other people named Holly forget that they didn't get the name in time, and/or messages for other Hollies which it takes me a while to work out aren't intended for me.)
2. If I'm not in time for the username Holly, I generally can't be bothered signing up to things; for services where I think I might eventually want to join, I feel no urgency because second-choice username severalbees is never, ever, ever taken ever anywhere.
(2a. Though I would be seriously affronted if it was.)
3. Which means I mostly sign up to things "pretty early" or "embarrassingly late", and the huge middle ground of "after it's become clear that a service is actually useful but before people have begun looking startled at my absence from it" is closed to me.
4. OH GOD WHAT DO I DO ABOUT TWITTER SUMANA, WHAT DO I DO?
Camille
http://wheelville.blogspot.com
04 May 2009, 9:20 a.m.
i always figured you had some well-defined techie reason why you weren't participating on facebook. i guess it's just one of things you just didn't think mattered. for what it's worth, the only reason i joined is because i moved to slovenia and wanted to stay abreast of what friends were up to. unfortunately, quite a few of those friends don't really update, so i am not really getting what i expected. that said, i find it to be a really good way to track down old friends and brand new acquaintances. i also like the new level of friendship these web 2.0 services create, where the level of obligation is low but still holds an opportunity for engagement. some people think it is cheapening friendship, but i think it is deepening it and making it more dynamic and layered.
here are some interesting thoughts on Twitter from John Battelle - http://battellemedia.com/archives/004910.php
Daf
http://dgh.livejournal.com/
04 May 2009, 9:55 a.m.
I don't have quite as strong a hatred of creating accounts as you do, but I'm quite convinced of the merits of late adoption. Early adoption is for those who have too much time on your hands. If I wait, they have time to fix bugs or to ship a better version, or maybe it will just stop existing entirely.
There are definitely downsides to accounts. Each account is an account to lose the password for and receive email about. Not to mention that vague psychic burden that comes of having extensions of yourself out there in the ether.
I resisted mobile phones and Facebook too, but eventually succumbed. I continue to resist Twitter (I already have too much stuff to read and don't write often enough) and smartphones (they're expensive or rubbish or quickly obsolete).
Andy
04 May 2009, 14:29 p.m.
Do not give in.
That's it - the sum of my accumulated wisdom.
Do not give in.
James
05 May 2009, 9:12 a.m.
Password safe is pretty good for keeping account info and passwords organised. Just back it up extensively... and don't forget your passphrase :) It makes creating accounts much less painful from a brainspace perspective. Whatever service you're creating an account for can still be a pain in the ass about what hoops they want you to jump through, though.
Hey tell me all about the Mike Daisey show after you go! Looks awesome.
I'll also add: perhaps if there were no advertising there would be no DSM-V! well, it'd be a lot shorter i bet.