Dead and Boring is Right.

Not too long ago, Mark Cuban gave an interview about the state of the Internet. He also wrote a post on his blog to follow it up. And a second post to talk about the reaction.

I get what he's saying. Facebook was nice. MySpace was a quick fix. But there's not much reason to go there everyday. When I was first serious about maintaining my MySpace page, which was months after I signed up, I logged in a few times each day. I checked my friends' pages several times a day as well. There were new, interesting bulletins for each hour. I would have a new message waiting for me at each log-in.

Now, I find myself logging in with no excitement. Sometimes, I even feel hesitant. There is nothing for me that I can't find somewhere else. The friends I care to know about stay in contact by other means. So, anyone that I have a connection with solely through MySpace really isn't important to me at this time. (I logged in just now to make sure I don't piss off anyone. And as I suspected, I'm in the clear.) This means that I could delete my account, and not miss a person.

The same thing is happening to Facebook, but it hasn't approached that final stage yet. There are still a few people that I communicate with primarily through Facebook messages and wall posts. A very few. And they are people who are important to me, so I can't delete that account yet.

I just got into Pownce, and I'm really happy with it so far. I'm a fan of 9 people, I have 6 fans, and I have 2 friends. But I use it mainly to see what the "higher ups" are doing. Every once in a while, someone starts a good conversation. Some of those people aren't on TV anymore, so I can follow their work easily when they post links or write a short message.

I use Flickr and Youtube also. I have accounts with Tumblr and Wikipedia, but I don't use those as much. I just started using del.icio.us, but I don't post bookmarks as much as I should. I just find it hard to rate a web site worthy, even when anything positive should put it in. It's in direct conflict with my standards. It's the reason why I rarely give a song 5 stars in iTunes. It's the reason why I rarely say "Oh, she's a 10." My expectations are too high, and unrealistic.

That seems to be the problem with how I view the Internet now. My expectations of what I want are too high, and unrealistic. I wouldn't be able to tell you what I want, just what I'm tired of seeing. The things I like already exist, and it's only a few services. I like invite-only social networks. I like music-oriented sites like Slacker. (Slacker is great. I hope they get the proper funding to keep it up.)

I'm tired of open social networks, and community-driven new-gatherers. Digg is going downhill, mainly because every other front-page story is a picture of something mildly amusing, or a news article 50 words long with no insight. For a week, nearly half of all the front-page stories were about Bioshock and it receiving perfect scores. Each time a magazine released a review, another story went front-page. It was annoying and redundant.

Sure, it's nice to let people participate and feel important. But as a group of people grows, the average IQ drops. I like having a distinction between experts and novices. I like having a small group of well-informed people take suggestions from the general public and sort through them. If my next door neighbor is clueless about sports, then I'm going to take his opinion on college basketball very lightly, if at all. But if he has been working with NASA concerning aerodynamics, then of course I'll listen to him about certain features of a space shuttle.

I like structure. I like rules and plans. I like knowing that the content I'm about to view has been verified, spell-checked, and approved to be entertaining.

It sucks that I'm actually good at dealing with people, but I really hate people.

That's why I'll never be president.