Blog Revamp & How (or Who) Do You Follow?

BLOG RE-VAMP
If you haven't ever visited here before, let me first congratulate you on finding me. Secondly, let me share that my previous blog "Randy's Thoughts" was for a Media Scriptwriiting class I took last year in college. The class was great, but the blog was a fail. I would go as far to say that it failed EPICLY So why would I revamp my blog? There a few reasons. One is that I just wanted to move on past the last blog. Another is that blogs and the idea of posting what you're going through online is normal now. It's widely accepted and dare I say expected! (cue dramatic prairie dog)*^{That means play the video.}

Ha! Come on, you know you laughed a little on that one. All kidding aside, I want to update my blog so I can stay up-to-date with where technology is heading and learn to use it well to display a message that is unlike anything else: the message of Christ as told through the keystrokes of one of His broken vessels.

How (or Who) Do You Follow?
In the midst of touching up my blog, the idea of following came to my mind and I found this pretty funny cartoon.

When I re-named my blog, the questions "How do you follow?" and "Who do you follow?" popped up in my head. When you think of how to follow, I'm sure your first thought is something like "following" someone on Twitter or adding a friend on Facebook. I know I do.

Following also brings to mind people on those sites with a ton of friends who they never talk to. I'm sure we can all of think of someone who's done the annual "Facebook Purge." Twitter seems like it could be the same way. The blue bird site has all those "real" followers (I'm talking about you SAMIapartments and LowerYourDebt) that are stand-ins for companies and products. I'm sure people just add and add to boost their follower numbers so they could be a Twitter trend.

My question in all of this is,"Why?" Why do we have hundreds and hundreds of FB friends and thousands of followers but never talk to them? I think the cartoon showed an interesting point with the guy actually following the other guy home. Yeah, it's funny and borderline stalking, but unlike some of us on these networking sites, there was a legit follow-up. There's no deleting your great aunt off of your friends list without her knowing or not talking to your best friend from high school for three years despite seeing them in your "Reconnect With..." box every week. There was real connection. There was a thriving relationship.

I'm not trying to be mean or condemn anybody. I'm not saying you're going to the lake of fire if you've got 687 friends and you only talk to 100 or so. No way. All I want to do is to get you guys to think about your relationships and how valuable they are to you. Would you add your Mom on FB and ignore her? How about a boyfriend or girlfriend? What if God had a FB or Twitter account?

I guess to me when I see people doing this, it sort of relates a hollow idea of a relationship, that a friend is someone you talk to every once in a while, exchange a few words with, but never really go deep with and get to know them. Yeah, I know that realistically we can't get get to know the ins and outs of everyone we meet, but I think when they're called your friends, there's a sort of implied responsibility to get to know that person well. Otherwise, I'd call everyone else an acquaintance. A core group of friends you know very well, and then acquaintances.