All Together Now

That's an earworm you won't thank me for, but if I can suffer, so can you.

It's been a few weeks at Blogger and I think I like it, more or less. I'm not sure about the notifications - conversations in comments aren't very long, and no third parties are joining in, but maybe people are still shy. For me the whole point of a blog is to get discussion going, so that problem remains. 

I have disabled that annoying Captcha thing, so when you comment you don't have to go through that nonsense. I hate those things with a passion. So, my #1 tip for others is "If you turn that off you'll get more comments". To turn yours off, you need to go to Settings > Posts and Comments, and then change "Word Verification" to "No". 

All this "Stats" data is fun, I think it's there for people with more obvious reasons for needing high audiences and details thereof etc, but it has already shown one clear thing: as always, sex and food win. Yes, the blogs entitled "Nipples" and "Shepherd's Pie" have the highest viewing figures despite being so recent. I shall keep an eye on that phenomenon to see if it continues. But I guess I'm not really surprised. 

Not everyone I met at Blogster has taken me up on my invite to stay in touch via Facebook or e-mail. There are a few that I shall miss, and I'm half-tempted to go back there and post a link to this blog. But then again, invitations to continue a relatively new friendship should not need repeating or pushing, there's some sort of social deadline or limit I think. 

Time passes. I am absolutely rotten at the old-fashioned ways of staying in touch with people offline, and I truly value the online methods. Thinking about all of this reminds me that there are people I used to talk to at Multiply that I've lost, and it seems a shame. 

There were "real life" friends in other places, back in England, and back in the city. There were many  people I knew before I moved here, that I intended to stay in touch with, and didn't. I can't help thinking if there had been Facebook back then it would all have been different. It's the lazy person's back-up connection, isn't it? But nothing wrong with that. All those people I've "found" on Facebook, that I "lost" years ago have forgiven me for not staying touch. They had to, because it works both ways. 

Mind you, I will never forget a rebuff I got some years ago. When we first came to Canada we were introduced by our landlady to another new immigrant family she'd helped get started, and for a while there they were our closest friends. They had also made some friends close to where they lived, who we saw regularly at their home and who seemed a lot of fun. After a couple of years, our friends called it quits on Canada, and threw a goodbye party. Maybe I was only being polite, I'm not sure, but I suggested to their Canadian friend that we should keep in touch, and she said "I don't really see the point". Yeah. OK. 

Poor social skills or just brutally honest? You choose, but obviously, that was a lucky escape. Nobody needs social contacts like that. 

Anyway, as I was saying, I do value Facebook and Google+. Even if I just don't "get" Google+.

I am trying to use it. There's something I'm missing. The lack of activity isn't just that we all don't get it. There's something I haven't switched on or my friends haven't switched on, because we're just not getting it. We'll figure it out, I guess, but if you have Google+ even if you have friended me and I have friended you back, we're not doing something. We need to do that, whatever it is. Gawd.