Google Plus
Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 8:20PM | by Otter I have been notified now that I have been added to peoples' circles.
This nuisance has been going on for a week or more.
In Google Plus (or Google+, for short), you can drop your friends (only, with really nice irony, they call it "dragging" them) into little circles [of hell] so they can spin around like germs in a centrifuge. Or so I imagine it. Officially, you "Drag people to your circles to follow and share." Uh-huh.
I have dragged friends into circles to see what would happen.
As in real life when you drag friends into your circle, nothing much does happen that I can tell, but it's possible that Google, being Google and knowing everything, then sends them my bank-balance and details about my private life: "Otter has added you in Google+! He has $53.29 in savings, and regularly emails a woman named Bianca living in Madrid! He has recently looked at porn, eaten at Jacques Imo's, and is currently rejecting the Triune God!"
You don't seem to be able to make it go away. As with so much these days, you can't turn it off. It's like a relate-to-me Leviathan.
I don't really get it.
It seems like Facebook, only heroic in its dedication to allowing me to post stupid bullshit only to select groups with great facility. It improves on Facebook in that I can easily choose who sees when I post stupid bullshit. Indeed, I think that we need Google+ in case Facebook ever springs a leak. It's like a digital lifeboat so that Stupid Bullshit can be saved when Facebook falls victim to subversive squads of self-absorbed hackers who decide that we've gotten too self-absorbed.
People are sharing with me. WHAT are they sharing? Nothing has been shared! I need to add MORE people to get shared with? Is this some joke extroverts are playing on the rest of us?
Not that I mind much: I don't have to actually do anything. With the glazed-eyed passivity born of
cyber-addiction, I can ignore your encircling of me, and never log on to see the things you "Plus" (this is Latin for "Like"). And while Google+ lets me video chat with you if I want to (I do not), I have lots of control over who gets to see me ready to chat.
But unlike in Facebook, I'm not allowed to say no. If I'm in your contact list, I can be placed into your circles. I am your pawn, your plaything, your chattle, your own little spark of imaginary otter-love. Drop me in your circles: who could resist.
But I will not place you in my circles: it's not personal, it's bidness.
I love you, perhaps, all of you who have encircled me.
But I am not above being non-plussed.
Reader Comments (5)
I just plussed this. I'm shooting for the "Trashy Wenches" circle.
Wait a minute, "plus" is Latin for "like"? I know my Latin is really, really rusty (and was even while I was taking the classes), but I specifically remember the drunken uncle in my old Ecce Romani books shouting "Plus vini!" [V's are so hard to type in Latin: I always want to hit W.] And not that facebook translations are reliable -- even with my rusty translations, I've caught grammatical errors -- or that there's only one way to say anything in each language, but instead of "like", my facebook homepage (which, if you hadn't guessed, is in Latin) says "mihi placet".
And yes, that was the only thing I latched on to in this post. Is there a circle for that?
In response to my waning interest, poor FB is becoming needy and desperate. I think I've gotten eight e-mails from the site in the past few days, trying to engage my attention with various posts and comments that have nothing to do with me. Unfortunately, these measures serve only to make me more acutely aware of my lack of interest, and to expand my impression of FB to include thoughts like "clingy" and "irritating." It does not bode well for our future together.
I love you DaddyO. I've dragged you kicking and screaming into one of my circles of hell. Bwaaa haaa haaa haaaaaa!!
I'm with Rachel P, working on the Trashy Wench thing. Apparently my nose really does it for some guys. Just saying.