The Sacrifices of Narrating Your Story

Found a video from the TED conference. The speaker’s plea is for technology companies to create tools that allows us to enjoy social networking without being closed off in our own world while we do it. Like those people who are sitting on their phones texting or tweeting while something incredibly fun and engaging is going on around them.

The reason this jumped out at me is because more often than not I am that person. In high school I always had a camera, and then I upgraded to a camcorder. I wanted to document everything I did because I wanted to be able to relive it again. The problem was, I wasn’t really living it the first time. I wasn’t enjoying it because I was too fixated on trying to capture and hold it. The funny this is, I don’t really watch any of those videos.

Now, when I am out – I twitter what I’m doing. I take a quick pic on my iphone. I think about what I’m going to blog about, or try to remember the person I met so I can facebook them later.

The video shows a picture of a couple kissing, and the girl is taking a picture of them kissing on her cell phone. The message she is sending to her boyfriend is “you are just a character in my narrative”. She is certainly more fixated on telling the story than she is on being a part of the story. Sometimes I feel with facebook and other social networking tools, we are more focused on appearing cool in our “story”/our profiles than we are about actually enjoying ourselves and having fun.

I don’t know if my twittering/blogging is more rude to the people I’m with or myself. I have a rule I try to keep where when I am out to dinner with someone, especially if it is just one other person- I don’t answer my phone or text or anything. If you do that you give the impression that they are not as important as whatever is happening on your phone. But, I will use social networking when just out with a group. (Example) So, I still am not fully dedicating myself to the group dynamic. I am hurting my own enjoyment, like with the cameras in high school, by not fully engaging either.

What is the tipping point between keeping up with social networking and communicating to friends and followers, and sacrificing your actual life?