Getting Harder and Harder to Be Social

I have not kept a regular blog. For the three or four (?) of you who actually will get this in your news-feeds, this is not new news. But I was thinking today after reading a NY Times post on the use of the word "socialize" as a transitive verb, that it is becoming harder and harder to be a truly "social" being.

What I mean is that it is difficult to develop relationships that inter-face in a medium other than technology (i.e. in real life). I am making some progress, but I find the internet has a tendency to degrade all social situations because of its all-pervasiveness.

For instance, calling my family or my friends with "news" is often redundant because I have already shared it via Facebook, Twitter, Googlebuzz, email, or something else. You pick up the phone and repeat everything you said in the email you sent two days earlier... Sort of weird.

This does not make the internet bad (though not necessarily neutral), but it does mean I have to work harder at being social, even though I can be potentially "mass-social" in an instant.