How much social network is enough

One day, i sit with my dad enjoying evening breeze while reading a newspaper with a cup of tea and our all-time fave snack, pisang goreng aka fried banana. Then I read an interesting, if not cynical, article. The title is "how much mall is enough?" the article cynically portray the urban paradox in Jakarta where big super mall are being built like mushroom while no one believes that Indonesia is no longer in the state of crisis. No one really have high purchasing ability, except for the haves, less than 20 % of the whole 220 millions population. Who would buy all those stuff in the mall? how much mall is enough???

The same irony strike me tonight when i tried to clean all my emails from junk, spam and unread mails. I found myself in big troubles as many of those unread emails are important mails. left untouched for weeks, even months! many of them, importantly, need my reply. Ooohh.. for my friends and colleagues who sent me mails, and haven't receive any reply from me, please forgive me... i will try my best to make it up for you guys in the future...

As i getting through all the clean up, i found that many mails are truly junk!! many of them no more than notifications from all social network that i subscribe to. Yes, people.. you are so not wrong. social network..

My God, i never realized that i subscribe so many of them. facebook, friendster, plurk, hi5, xing, diino, twitter (oh, i just delete my account), and many more. not to mention the blogging stuff, livejournal, blogger, bloggaul... and my biggest guilty pleasure. tv-drama related forums.. geeezzz.. i cannot even mention each one of them as i apply so many of them. And too bad, none of those accounts are deletable!

so, i start asking myself... how much social network i actually need? if each social network represent my certain interest, how many things that actually, really interest me? do i start to have this multiple personality? (ooh.. i know i am taking things to far for this one ;p)

How many social network is enough?

Is our life getting so complicated that we need more than 1 social network or blog to stay in touch and express our self?

how many of us actually live that world and choose to live that way as it is more exiting than meeting the real people?

does having all these network is fulfilling?

or this multiple network is just a trend? a social trend that will continue to evolve as the world continue to revolve..

quoting a song, "somewhere that only we know"

originally written on August 1