the smack factor

Back in the day when I had a job, in order to keep my sanity and remember that it’s never THAT serious, I would snark happily with my favorite work pal about having an anti-social network. This stemming from the constant beta projects internally as well as random networking being built in the real world that would pepper our inboxes with “Spatula wants you to join them on FoodiesForFitness” or “I found you on MethLab, click to cook up with me!” My reaction early in the social networking game was definitely one of curiosity. I had a MySpace page for maybe a month or two, but then I realized that it’s a lot of passive aggressive reverse voyeurism+real voyeurism. I mean, seriously, who wants someone to see their back and forth conversation… not even on one page. I would get weird inbox notifications of “new pics up, comment me!” and I wanted to barf. So I got rid of that. I joined LinkedIN, but I had a job and LinkedIN was a little too action heavy for an ADHD-er like me. Now that I’m unemployed, I kind of want to keep it up to date… but like, I’d rather blog when I have time. Then there are the newish social networking type dealios (by newish I mean my mom doesn’t know about them) that are based on tagging, and ACTUAL SOCIAL EVENTS like going.com (which is more of a “tastemaker” site where the person who first discovers the info is seen as the cool kid and then everyone is sort of below them. Oooh, maybe a little info discovery social networking?) If anything, i’d rather be involved in a SOCIAL social networking site because then it’s not based on the randomness of words (dif names for the same things), but the actual human at of socializing.

Anyway, where AM I going with this. Oh, I was in the bathroom, which is where I do my best thinking, and I was wondering if there were social networks based on searches. And would you want that? I ask this because this morning I went into the bathroom, got mildly angry at all the little hairs everywhere that signaled SOMEONE shaved their beard this morning (no, not you grandma), and saw something that made me shriek. There, in the pool of standing water on the sink that Factor leaves every day were… WEIRD WORMY THINGS. They were tiny and squirmy and a little malevolent looking. I immediately bleached the hell out of them, shot off a note to Factor about not creating a worm factory and thought “hm, I should google these guys”. Ok, you’re following right? So then I thought “hmmm, what if when you searched on stuff, you could opt in to be included in a “these people searched for that too, want to connect?” roll up. But like… do I want people to know I have weird wormy things crawling on my bathroom sink (I guess I do now) — and better yet, do i want to hang out with other people who do? I look at my referrals every day on wordpress, and it always cracks me up.. the “people searched on these terms to get to your site” portion. Maybe all the people looking for “frequent urination” should hook up with the “oily butt” people.

What about the people who search on “get skinny fast”, maybe they want to know “the real ed hardy hat” people. Looking back on my history of searches, I’m not so sure “tara reid nip slip” is the network I want to build. But yes, I did search on Tara Reid nip slip.