As we all do, I know people in person with whom I'm connected on social media. In person, they know there's a social contract and they abide by it. They refuse to drone on with detailed trivia, because there'd be a price to pay, socially, and they're rather not pay it. But they check in on foursquare, relay that to twitter. They post what they're having at chipotle, which is not a unique gourmet experience. Ad nauseam.
They would not dream of doing this in person because it would make them a boor. Yes, a boor. Let's not mince words. They know it. We all know it. The only people who do this in person actually are boors.
But somehow it's OK if it's on social media? No, it's not OK. It's still boorish.
Also, this is a perfect example of the kind of shit that's permissible in on Quora, but not permissible in a room filled with 500 people. Sure it's great intended use of the website, but is it intended use of the user?
http://www.quora.com/Seattle-WA/Who-are-some-entrepreneurshi...
Not going to lie, the places online where I feel most social are anonymous boards like 4chan. Which is the polar opposite of a social network.
I think the problem is when you privilege performance over intimacy, which privately owned and operated social networks have incentives to do.
Which is one of the many reasons I'm rooting for a decentralized, distributed social networking solution. I've got high hopes for tent.io, for example.
It's that people use their social network of choice to make others believe they have interesting, fascinating, exciting lives whether it's true or not. The more effort a person puts into this the less interesting they actually are in real life but you wouldn't know it by looking at their Facebook page. Insecurity plays a big part in this. Some of the most shallow, hollow, unhappy people I know have Facebook timelines that make them seem as though they are living the dream when in reality they truly hate themselves. I'm not trying to disparage them - they really do hate themselves, they've told me so and see therapists about it.
Now that we have Internet celebrities who've built a brand everyone wants to do it too. And it's not hard. All you need is any common smartphone. It's about building a fantasy life. On the web it's easy to play pretend and give off certain impressions. Some people take it to the point where they believe their own myths. These are the most uninteresting people in the world with, ironically, the most interesting social network profiles in the world.