With the markets in the gutter, the holiday retail season ‘the worst it’s ever been’ (don’t they say that every year?) and Karl Marx actually seeing some press time again (are you kidding me?), I thought I’d offer up this lovely little ditty to everyone looking to dis (in the harshest mid-80′s sense of the term) capitalism. Enjoy.

Alan, I originally wrote this as a comment back to your comment to my earlier post on ‘Now Not New‘ but it’s grown enough to warrant being a post. Not sure if I’m breaking a blogerati rule by addressing a post to one friend but hell, it’s my damn blog, I’ll do what I want…

Your 30-something soccer mom is definitely on the rise and using FB differently. My wife is one and she and her friends use it very socially, swapping pictures, ranting through their status updates, and basically ‘keeping in touch’ through the passive means FB facilitates. It’s perfect for the mom-on-the-go who’s finding ‘girlfriend time’ hard to come by.

I’ve also noticed that the further you go into the generational alphabet (gen x, gen y), the more friends these FB users have. So I do humbly do recognize the FB-effect is generational and skewing heavier with youth and that while I stick to my guns on the rate of change any culture brings about, I do see the wave gaining momentum.

That said, having 468 people on a list called ‘friends’ probably shouldn’t be confused with real friendship, so I take all the talk of the ‘power’ of these relationships with some heavy NaCl.

There are two other things I’ve lately been wondering about as I’ve tinkered with FB and (less so) Twitter.

One is the dynamic of low-maintenance relationships… that is, with minimal effort we can ‘keep in touch’ with many people more often than ever before. It feels to me not so different from Xmas cards – (which we’re currently getting many of right now): Yeah, I see a picture of your kids (oh,how they’ve grown) and a small hand-written sentiment (‘wish you this that and the other thing’), but I know it’s not really personal. That’s ok, I don’t expect it to be. If we’re close, we’ll catch up in person some time, and if not, well, some relationships are like that – no harm no foul.

The second point of interest is the drive behind the social media uptake. Why are these technologies so addictive? Why do I feel compelled to fill in my FB status when I log in? I think it might be my ego. I feel important and relevant in putting my status out there to my 116 ‘friends’. No one may read it, or care, but it feels good inside doing it. It’s also great to see a comment or response. It confirms my importance in my world.

This reminds me of the same rush I used to get back as a kid when a pen-pal sent me a letter in the mail. It confirmed someone was thinking about me and wanted to communicate with me. It made me feel relevant and important. An age-old drive repackaged in a new technology.

Where passive-mass-keeping-in-touch crosses with ego-driven-need-to-feel-relevant is where I think social networks and blogging and twitter have found their audience. Interestingly, money doesn’t figure into that equation and wasn’t part of the original ‘deal’ when these tools were made available to us.

At least with old-school letter writing the stationer and post office made a little scratch.