Socially unsocial

I don't always quite get it why people are so addicted to the various forms of the hottest topic nowadays, the social media. Yeah, I am grateful to the inventor of Facebook, there's no denying that it has more benefits than disadvantages for a socially active person. Everybody can tell why it is so good so I am not going to get into that. However, I can live without it. Still living here in the countryside I find it extremely useful in order to talk to people that live further, but if I am not feeling especially lonely, I survive without it. It is more like a tool to entertain yourself or to decrease your phone bill when you have an option to communicate for free.

My sister made me install the application Foursquare on my phone a while ago and I was really excited about it since it was something new and I got to do check-ins and I became the mayor in some places. Then, after a while I realised that I am unemployed and live in the countryside, which means I go somewhere max once a week so that I can even use that application. The glory of it kind of faded, checking in became annoying and felt a little obligatory. On top of that, my little sister discovered Foursquare and stole my mayorships. Settings, delete application.

I haven't created Instagram or Twitter accounts, nor have I ever bothered to go through them enough to even know how they actually work. I don't have a need to let everyone know what I am doing or thinking constantly, I'll tell it when I want to and I'll do it here. Or directly to the person I want to share it with. Besides, I am actually quite a bad photographer and my phone's camera isn't even so good to publish pictures taken with it. 

I guess I am a private kind of a social media user, I prefer reading others' posts and status updates and only posting when I really have something to say. Okay, my last Facebook status was about tequila, but that was simply because it was the first time in a long time that I was out with my friends so the situation required a Facebook status update.

But like my title very frankly puts it, in my opinion the so-called social media is in some dimensions highly unsocial. Could someone please tell me which part of it all is social? Since, basically, even when you're chatting with someone in Facebook, you are alone in your chair staring at a machine. I admit that it makes you feel less lonely even writing to someone and them writing back but there's no warmth, there's no body language, no facial expressions and no real chemistry that makes you feel good when interacting with people.