33 Comments on “Because It’s Not Enough to Follow Me Here and On Twitter and On Facebook”

1. SO VERY VERY ALONE ? With 181 friends? Of which I have been one for most of a year.

2. Okay, I have no spine and can’t handle the pressure. I friended you there.

3. Oh cool. Clearly, this is a sign I need to bump more of your books up the sorting order on my To Read shelf there. ;)

4. Same here. I am weak, plus I got this message:

   :”ohn Scalzi is currently #1 in your favorite authors.”

   Happy, Scalzi, that you are my number one?

5. I weep with joy.

6. Ok, why is everyone that went to your high school cool whereas mine, not so much.

7. Since you insisted you can be my very first friend on Goodreads! Bwahahaha!

   No really.

   Please.

   …

8. Damnit. Why not Shelfari!? Too many damn sites.

   For some reason I find “friending” authors/actors/etc. on Facebook odd. I mean, it is one thing “follow” someone because you like their book and quite another to start calling them “friend”.

   I have this quaint notion that you shouldn’t call someone a “friend” unless, at the very least, saying “let’s grab a beer” wouldn’t seem strange.

9. Never done anything with anyone on any social site. Umm, this is so embarrassing, for you the world and all, but do what exactly?

10. It’s overthinking the “friend” aspect of social networks, Steve. Real word friend and Facebook friend are not the same thing.

11. All alone. Right. Well, I befriended you anyway out of sheer pity. ;)

12. John: I dunno…I use Facebook to upload pictures of my kid, tell people what I’m up to. This is the sort of thing that’s for friends, not random people.

13. That is by FakeScalze. No mention of DoubleDoubles.

14. Oddly I do tend to reserve FaceBook, if not for actual friends, actual acquaintances.

    Twitter is whoever I want to listen to.

    Blogs are whoever I want to read.

15. I’ve been on GoodReads over a year now. I have found so many great books through it. It’s not like Facebook or other social networking sites. It’s all about reading, reading, reading. There are some great book clubs too. That’s where I get to read stuff I wouldn’t pick up otherwise.

16. Been meaning to go there and sign up. Was bored tonight so did. I need to hire someone to add my books.

    What is a good group to get good SF reading from. Was looking over the groups and the brief glance I did not have any that got my heart aflutter.

17. Ah but how many impossible things can you do before breakfast?

18. Oh yeah, btw, I’ve got The Bong ready. You’re not going to faint again, right?

19. I’ll endorse goodreads, meaningless as my backing may be. I just started importing my reading lists over the last few months and scared myself when I realized that since Memorial Day Weekend of 2007 I have read an even 250 books. Anyone (Tom @ 16) who needs ideas can friend me there and mine my bookshelves for ideas.

20. Poor lonely author. I’ll be your friend.

    Now we’re friends. Yay. Let me just tell you about my day…. first, I woke up. I didn’t want to because while I was sleeping I was fighting ninjas on a big ship that was in the middle of a city. I don’t know why it was in a city, but it was pink and there were big guns down the side. The ship made me feel happy. I liked the ship. The city smelled like toes.

    Oh I could do this for hours, but I’m feeling merciful this morning.

21. I was ever anonymous?

22. Bacon isn’t an influence?

23. John.

    First let me say that I did not go to your school or your college, or your newspaper, or your home in DC.

    So I am further than 6 degrees separated from you.

    My question is: Am I the only one?

24. Dude, if you’re talking to me on my blog, you can’t claim six degrees of separation.

25. okay, so there are six john scalzi results when i search facebook, one of which is something getting you to write a musical. which one is actually your creation? and is there such a parlor game as six degrees of john scalzi??

26. The one from Dayton, Ohio is me.

27. thanks. in the interests of full disclosure (not to get too kinky about it), i’m the one from missoula, montana, posing as a cat.

28. I just don’t get the point of this sort of thing.

    I also have absolutely no desire to have anything to do with Facebook or twitter or any of the other time-suck networking organism I’ve been invited to join.

    I prefer to save my limited personal time for real contact with my real friends.

    Possibly I’m not well socialized.

29. @29 Mary.

    Well if you do not spend all your time on those sites it might mean you have a life.

    Or (like me) you just waste all your time doing other things.. Playing games, reading books,

30. I spend the brain cycles I’d spend listening to the radio or having a TV on looking at and commenting on blogs, Twitter, Facebook et al (and occasionally even updating my own blog) because it’s two-way, rather than passive. Also, I don’t have to wait for $DJ’s line to be free to have my say.

    Yeah, that’s about it.

31. I’m glad I’m not the only one who’s never felt moved to follow an author or other famous person on facebook, just because I like the work they do. If John had a facebook page, rather than his personal facebook profile, I’d probably be okay with signing on as a fan. But the whole friend thing just implies a connection I don’t have. I figure that a facebook friend is, at minimum, someone I’ve had a one-on-one discussion with for fifteen minutes, or at least someone who I’d recognize and say hi to if I ran into them in public unexpectedly. I might recognize John on the street (maybe), but I probably wouldn’t go up to him unless I knew he was doing something where that was expected (book signing, attending a con, etc).

    As for goodreads: the terrible organization of that website makes me really upset. Maybe I’m just too obsessed with correct data, but filling in Library of Congress classification data, ISBN numbers, and DDC on librarything.com just fills me with a kind of unexplainable joy, deep inside. Goodreads doesn’t allow you to enter that kind of data, so I guess it’s just not for me.

32. I have no idea who you are – I just came here by way of @jason107. But I think I love you, so you’re not alone.

33. @28 Mary

    This is one complaint I don’t get. I’ve been social networking on computers since 1988 and one of the first things that comes out of it is personal contact.

    Back in the BBS days of dial-up we had regular beer and baseball meetups. In my usenet and irc days (mostly alt.callahans and #callahans) I ended up meeting and visiting people from all over the eastern seaboard.

    Now in my Twitter days there are spontaneous and organized meetups happening regularly.

    As far as I can tell it’s a myth that talking to people on computers leads to less ‘real’ contact. In my experience it leads to more.