You just never know. Seriously.

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In a town like mine it can be easy to assume you know people. And that you know people who know people. And those people, well they know you. And you know that these people that know you and the people who know people are probably having a chat about somebody. And that somebody might be you. It becomes blatantly obvious when reports of your whereabouts have beaten you to your location. Or the great story you had barely encountered is already general knowledge. 
It’s a bit strange. 
But I can handle it. I have been around here a while. So has my family. It’s something I grew up with. People just know stuff about us. Gotten over it. But now, it is happening to me more and more as I blog and facebook and {tentatively} Twitter. People know stuff about me. Lots of stuff. You {as in you reading this right now} know stuff about me I don’t really talk about. That is the advantage. I don’t have to blurt it out. I type it out. Problem solved. On with life. Or so I thought.
But lately people I know have been saying, yeah, I know, I saw it on {insert social media or blog title here}. It takes the interaction out of conversation and relationships a little. Or does it merely create a platform to move straight past small talk? Hmmm. 
Like my great OctSOBER challenge. I was excitedly telling someone about it on Monday and they went ‘Yeah, I know, it was on facebook’. And it killed it a little. The excitement. Not the actual challenge. That is still going strong. And the same went for when I have my haircut, redecorate or we start getting a fence. 
They already know. My penchant for social networking has already delivered it into their laps. And it is strange. Weird, really to think about. That they already know. They saw the photos. I may not have seen them face to face in almost ten years but they already know. 
Doesn’t that strike you as odd? 
Does this happen to you. Are you a little afraid of the viral marketing that has occurred on your life without you realising it had taken hold? And is there any other solution other than don’t put it there or get over it? Share your wisdom. Help a weird’ed out girl out.   

7 responses to “You just never know. Seriously.”

  1. Yes! I have totally had that! I got very excited showing off my eternity ring at school drop off and one of the mums said yeah I've seen it, I read your blog. Really stumped me for a second!

  2. Yup. My son doesn't have Facebook but his GF does, and she posts stuff before he tells me. I've learned to pretend I didn't know because I could hear his excitement die whenever I said "Yeah, I saw that on Facebook…"

  3. Suger Coat it, I just went to a school reunion with many people I haven't seen in 20 years and, thanks to FB, I knew stuff about them! It is crazy and boring but kinda fun too because you could just say, so you have 2 kids, how is that going?

  4. I was having a conversation with a friend about this the other day, mainly in regards to facebook after a few of our acquaintances had mentioned things in passing that we didn't recall talking to them about.We decided that it's not so much the that people know this stuff that worried us, but that they hadn't commented on it online before talking about it in person. That was the part that felt odd. If it had been a continued conversation from one had online it would have felt less like they were 'lurking' our FB and more like we were just catching up on news.

  5. Ah, the facebook effect. Or is it affect? Not sure, but either way it always blows me away.

  6. When they say, "Yeah I know"; about the only thing you can do is to say, "well, what do you think?". At least that might keep some conversation going.

  7. Ha! I knew it. We are ALL being stalked. Great tips and pointers on making it seem less odd. And River, that was genius.

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