The new URL for my other blog, my original blog. The URL now more closely matched to blog title.
Blogger offers no redirect function, sadly.
drrnm.blogspot.com
Business Insider January 28 2016
Cited
'In the early '90s, anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that a human being has the capacity to have up to 150 meaningful relationships. Recently, Dunbar did a study of human interaction on Facebook and found that number to be much lower. We only have 4 real friends, and 14 that care at all.
Produced by Joe Avella'
End Citations
Philosophically, I have viewed online work and contacts as a means to an end and not an end.
My various Blogger, Google+ and Facebook sites exist primarily for career, ministry and personal reasons, but if I was to make a significant contact online, there would be a significant mutual interest to possibly have offline contact if circumstances allowed.
In other words, hypothetically at least, someone online would be worth potentially contacting offline.
Online social networking for the sake of online social networking in itself has very limited value for myself.
I, of course use online blogging as a media to publicly present my academic work, which includes the potential of public critique.
Social networking sites also provide entertainment and have some educational value.
Via one of my You Tube subscriptions, I was recently watching a very professional online female relationship coach from Europe that stated (paraphrased) home-produced 'selfie' profile photos made a man look like he sits at home all the time with no social life.
She noted that it was better to use a profile photo from a social setting.
On one hand, I can see this reasonable psychology.
My Conwy, Castle photograph with my English friend, Simon, is a very good profile photo for me to use on Facebook, as even though it is a few years old it shows me in a social setting.
And I basically look pretty much the same...thankfully. Slightly older with a little more muscle mass.
On the other hand, frankly, as I have stated in different articles on this site, I am not interested in sharing my social life online in great detail.
I have been to a combination of Europe and the British Isles approximately eight times, including living in England for almost two years, but I have chosen to share very few of my actual photographs.
I have visited the United States several times.
Instead, I share professional photos from sites such as Facebook, Google+ and Trekearth.
Many of these are of Europe.
Intellectually, it should not be concluded I have no interest in visiting Europe or that I have no interest in world travel because I do not share many of my own photos.
In the same way, it should not be concluded that I do not like to attend parties because I do not share many party photos online.
Should I use social events to promote myself for 'loosely defined acquaintances' that are on the fence on whether to contact me in faith, and perhaps get to know me better?
Since most of our online contacts are 'loosely defined acquaintances' there is very little commitment to being a Facebook 'Friend' or Google+ "Friend'.
If someone wants to find out more about me, there are many social media options available as opposed to making deductions about me from the sort of profile photos presented!
I think what can be deduced from social media and my profile photos is that I work a lot and share the occasional 'selfie' taken while I am online.
I listen to sermons from SearchLight Ministries and Pastor Jon Courson, online, and a true thing he states (paraphrased) is that social media sites such as Facebook do not present reality but often show people trying to make their lives look better and more exciting than they are in reality.
They are as phoney as my bodybuilder friend Bobby Buff in the 1990s, as he denied at the time he was showing off his muscles to the women at Columbia Bible College, wearing his angelic white muscle shirts.
Only to finally admit that this was the truth, decades later.
As I have noted theologically, persons are finite and sinful (Ephesians, Romans as examples).
Placing too much trust in limited knowledge, social deductions from social media is a danger of the present times.
Within modern psychology in the context of career job facilitators and corporate headhunters, they stress the need to make personal offline social contacts in all areas of life.
It is acceptable that these offline contacts originate as online ones.
I heard it stated recently (paraphrased) that no matter how good your intellectual arguments are you will not convince someone until you get to their emotions.
There is much truth to that in many cases (although in an academic context less so) and that is a reason for in-person intellectual and emotional, offline contacts in the contexts of career, ministry and personal.
 |
| Google+/Facebook |
