Myspace as a number one mean of communication?

Nowadays – and I must admit in the past three years this has been the case – myspace is more to me than a simple community portal 190 million people are addicted to. The truth is that it’s become my number one channel of communication with my real-life friends and acquaintances.

If I want to meet, say, Emke, Bius, Szonja, Réka, Melinda or Anetta in the afternoon, I just drop them a line instead of texting or calling them. If I want to discuss an important issue with, for example, Sárka or Wolgfang, I’d sooner do it on myspace than in an ordinary email. And to carry this extreme even further, I must admit that I often get in touch with people on myspace to settle business-related issues, too.

I do this blog, in the first place, to keep in touch with my friends and get closer to likeminded people I do not yet know that well. To read and comment on entries is much easier than telling everybody the exact same thing all over again. Talking about things in depth is often easier in writing than in speech anyway.

Ages ago I used to be into “snail mail”, there was a time when I had over 30 pals. That’s how I got to know, among many others, Sárka, Hanna, Zuzie, Szonja, Anwyn, Nadine, Gaby, Lioba, Carmen and quite a few other precious people. I still do write letters every once in a while, but the brutal changes of the Hungarian Post have kind of destroyed my correspondence-addictions: two and a half years ago they suddenly doubled prices, closed several post offices and tripled the time for delivering letters. Amazon, Ebay and many other sites, in the meanwhile, have put the Hungarian Post on the ban-list, claiming how it was impossible to guarantee their packages arrive.

All in all, I’m very much disturbed by the fact that myspace is not as reliable as it should be, either. People keep disappearing from my friends list just like that, friends are “accidentally” deleted from my blog subscibtion list, plus it often happens I cannot comment on certain pages, nor am I able to open certain blogs. It has also happened before that I sent out messages I perceived as “read” messages a day after, whereas my friend has never even actually heard of it!

I’d like to make it clear here and now that it’s certainly not a problem if you do not immediately or at all reply to my messages, comments, blog entries – we all know that everybody has a life besides myspace. The problem is if those messages, comments and blog entries vanish into thin air at some point and communication is hindered for days, weeks and perhaps even months… in which case I’d like to let you know that it’s partly my fault for getting too dependent on myspace, putting other means of nonpersonal communication in the second place!