It’s been quite some time since I have written here on Spare Change. Originally intended to been a monthly blog, it somewhat dwindled into more of a yearly escape from the standard gaming talk of the Throwdown. I had made a promise to myself at the time, that I would become more social and spend a little less time on the computer. The irony was that the less time I spent on the computer, the less social I became. It was then that I realized something about our culture as of the past several years. Being “social” doesn’t mean what it used to mean. My lack of internet activity over the course of those few months caused a dramatic decline in my social outings, simply by a lack of interaction with people I normally would of had contact with via Facebook, Google+, Twitter, or online games. Sure I got out of the house more, but I actually did less. I found myself missing out on invitations to parties or get together’ just because I hadn’t been on computer for a couple days.
A dozen years into the new millennium and I’m just figuring this out? Of course not. This has been common in many places. But you have to understand where I live. Its a smaller town in the central valley of California, and has never been considered on the “cutting edge” of anything. So for this to happen here, it just finally dawned on me that we really are in a new age, where even the town full of farmers are picking up their iPads to invite their cousins to the bonfire. Having an internet presence is having a social life. I’m not saying having 10,000 friends on Facebook is a substitute for having friends you can physically spend time with, but it certainly can’t hurt.
