tonight i saw a movie called catfish. the marketing is all very secretive — the tagline is actually “don’t let anyone tell you what it is”, ugh — in a ploy to generate buzz for what’s actually a pretty fascinating, but really not that edgy or out there movie. but this isn’t about the film; i’ll talk about that more over here in the next few days probably.
what i wanted to put to a vote was something i’ve done a few times now. i go to some event in los angeles that i really enjoy. say, the pavement show i mentioned yesterday, or the new pornographers show from last month. or in this case, an early screening for a film that was a big hit at sundance. then a few hours later, i come home and do a twitter search for other people that just did the same thing, and click on a few to see if there are any rad locals whose blogs i could read or tweets i could follow, or so on.
on the surface, this may sound a little weird and obsessive, sure (especially if you happened to just see the film catfish). but isn’t this out-of-the-ordinary behavior of mine exactly what social technology should be used for? connecting people digitally who might be friends if only given the ice-breaking opportunity in real life?
admittedly, it’s only led to a few people worth following (one onion writer, for example, and a couple all-purpose nerds), and it’s not like i’ve forged any friendships this way — but i’d like to think it could happen, and it could be great. in fact, what i find more depressing is that a lot of the people i click on who share my interests still don’t seem that cool. either my standards are way too specific, or an awful lot of LA people just aren’t very interesting.
(yeah, okay, shut up bay area, NY, pac NW, and all other regions of non-LA friends who tagged a mental ‘duh’ onto that last sentence. i like it here.)
so yes, the question: creepy or not creepy? good idea or waste of energy?