[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

On a kindle discussion list I follow, we were asked our opinion of social reading. As an introvert, I find the whole concept of social reading to be baffling. I find I don't really care what other people highlight in a book (when I got my Paperwhite, one of the first things I did was turn off popular highlights).

Is all this social reading supposed to make reading more attractive to extroverts ? (Hey, reading is *cool* - you don't have to be a four-eyed geek to like to read!) Is it seen really as a way to sell more books, to hasten new book discovery?

I don't know. All social functions on my Kindle are disabled and will stay disabled. I read books on that thing, not chat with other people or send messages out on the internet.

Somehow, being an introvert is seen as being un-American, I think. Is it so in other countries?

Nah. In the Netherlands it's quite the same. I'm often derided for not having Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, or whatever stuff is hip at the moment. (And that's even while being a software engineer.)

There are many people over here that are trying to be hipsters and try to "socialize" and "online-ify" everything they do, being constantly busy with their phones or tablets or laptops "checking" things, and often they are extremely social but not with the company they're currently with, but by posting stuff on the internet. I don't feel *any* inclination to be that way.

(I'm going to kill the next person that has to check Facebook or Twitter or e-mail three times in a minute while I'm giving him an answer to a question he just asked himself.)

If I want you to know something, I'll tell you, and if I need to know anything, I'll ask you, not look it up online in a profile. And what I'm reading at this moment and what I think of it at this time, is not one of the things I constantly want to share. Maybe if something is particularly good or bad, I might write a review somewhere and that's about it.

All that "social" stuff is a hype of the times, IMHO. At some point, people will get fed up with it (and realise it's not a good idea to tell everybody everything), and then it'll be gone or a lot less prominent.

edit:

Originally Posted by Bilbo1967

I hate the modern thinking that seems to be that any activity is worthless unless you let everybody you know that you're doing it. Facebook for your daily movements. Twitter for what you're doing or thinking at that very second in mind-numbing detail, a blog to expand on it all at the end of the day/week, text messaging for inane chatter, Instagram to share boring pictures of it, blah, blah, blah - drives me mad.

And now we can't even enjoy the solitude of a nice read without having to share bits of it?! Well they can all just take a running jump. I'll continue to mention books I enjoyed to my friends, but there is no way I'm going to stop reading to post excerpts that I enjoyed to Facetwitter. Bah, humbug.

I could not have said this any better myself, including your closing remark.