Missing

You know, I make an effort to remain relevant, so again and again, despite my better judgment, I return to Twitter and Facebook to try to figure out what the appeal is. These modalities seem to me to be the Web codification of the appropriately named quantity "small talk." Well, if there is a gene for chitchat, it was spliced out of me at the beginning.

But Web small talk isn't even small talk that is directed at anyone in particular, which drains it of whatever "small" charm it may have to begin with. In "real life," small talk at least may facilitate being with another person, however minimally or casually. If email, which at least has a designated recipient, is a message in a bottle, Facebook and Twitter (like the more otiose blogs around) are confetti cast upon the waters, social and semantic froth. Is life really long enough for these things?

As usual I cast my lot with Emily:

The Missing All -- prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
If nothing larger than a World's
Departure from a Hinge --
Or Sun's extinction, be observed --
'Twas not so large that I
Could lift my Forehead from my work
For Curiosity.