Links: The Dirty 30

by Lang Whitaker

A couple of weeks ago, my wife invited a few friends over for dinner at our new apartment. Apparently when you move to a new apartment, the actual moving and re-organizing itself isn’t enough to go through; after you move you must then spent the next few months systematically inviting every person you know over so they can see your new place. Anyway, at some point during the evening, Wifey’s friends convinced her to sign up for Facebook. Over the last few years, as Facebook has been on the rise, I’ve stayed out of it. I generally agree with Khalid’s astute assessment that people are connected enough as it is. I had a Myspace page, but that was only because adidas asked me to have one in their microsite and keep a blog during the 2006 World Cup. I let it die soon after. And now Facebook is here, making me even less trusting of people than I was before.

I don’t trust anyone who has a bunch of photos of themselves all over their site. I understand maybe having pictures of your family or your friends or whatever, but really, does anyone need to see a dozen photos of you from third grade?

I don’t trust anyone who uses a scantily-clad picture of themselves as their avatar. I appreciate it, believe me. But I don’t trust them.

I don’t trust anyone who has time to update their site/feed/whatever more than, like, six or seven times a day. I especially don’t get the people who update 25 times with stuff like, “going to the store.” Hey, you’re going to the grocery store, great. Nobody cares!

At least I don’t, and perhaps that’s why I’m just not that into you, Facebook. I can understand people’s willingness to forfeit some modicum of privacy in order to stay in touch with people from their past, but is it really that hard to keep in touch with people? I’m rarely not able to find someone from back in the day, and people seem to have no problem finding me, based on the amount of random emails I get from people from middle school and high school.

Last week I had a meeting with the editor of my book that I’m supposed to be working on, and somehow we started talking about Facebook. Wifey had suggested I join Facebook as a way to promote the book, and I asked my editor’s opinion. He agreed that joining Facebook might be an effective way to help the sales of the book. I submitted that by the time the book is out, in Spring of 2010 (hopefully), Facebook will probably be dead and gone.

So, as sort of a compromise with myself, last weekend I signed up for Twitter. (Actually, I signed up via my Sidekick while Wifey was shopping and I was sitting around bored.) I like Twitter for a few reasons, but mostly because hardly anyone understands what the heck it actually is. I get it though — it’s basically a self-limiting blog. (Thus far, the main thing I’ve been learning about via twitter is the Rick Ross/50 Cent beef.)

What I really appreciate about it is ease of use. For like five years now I’ve asked the powers-that-be behind SLAMonline to give me the ability to post stuff on The Links via email. I used to do one long post every day linking to all the relevant NBA news from around the web, but now that that’s no longer needed, now that the internets are bustling with information, I would love to be able to post short things, five or six times a day, just quick thoughts and ideas and photos. (And imagine the possibilities from All-Star!) But no matter how many times we redesign the website, somehow I still can’t update via my phone.Which means I have to sit down and log in via my laptop and basically build an entire page every time I want to share something with you guys. Which is why I usually wait to update The Links until I have something worthy of posting.

So now I have a tumblr account and a twitter account, both of which I can update via my Sidekick or iPod. I’m still Linkstigating, but I’ll be checking in as often as I can on the other sites, too.So you guys follow me or whatever it is people do on those sites, and I’ll follow you back, or whatever it is people do on those sites.

And since I’m here, let’s get Dirty with the 30. Again, I’m not considering head-to-head performance or anything like that, just ranking these teams in order of which team I’d least like to see my team play against tonight…