Confessions of One Man and His Fascination with Networking
John Gaudet
October 15, 2006
It started innocently enough. I was about to be published. My new novel was headed for the presses and I had been told by my publisher to assemble every address of every friend and relative, every work colleague and every passing acquaintance. His promotional plans called for a mailing list once the book was launched, and that list had to be ready “soonest,” as he was in the habit of saying. “Direct mailing,” he also growled, earnestly, with a conclusiveness in his voice that made a cash register ring some place not far away, “that’s like money in the bank.”
I left his office and arrived home where my wife suggested I start with our Christmas card list. This is a job I normally hate. Every November I face it with distaste, but now I realized that this list was the equivalent of a gold mine. I even supplemented it with those names of people we had dropped over the years. Presumably just because they didn’t send us a card in return in years gone by, was no reason to exclude them from the privilege I was about to grant them. Given the quality and brilliance of my new book, I was certain they’d jump at the chance to buy it.
Problems immediately arose. Do they still live at the same old address? Were they still alive? Did any of them have sympathetic friends that I could add to my growing list? For answers, I turned to my new computer, and, for me, a host of locator resources that I had previously seldom used, ZoomInfoSearch, SuperPagesPeopleFinder, InfoSpaceWhitePages, Switchboard, Bigfoot, and on and on, dot com.
They worked wonders of course, but from then on my life changed. Not only was I successful in finding names, addresses and telephone numbers, but out spilled web pages with photos, e-mail addresses, Yahoo group message sites, photo albums, MySpace profiles decorated with photos and graphics beyond imagination, often backed up with music, moving figures, videos, slide shows, workplace experiences, opinions, suggestions and offers of every conceivable nature.
I told myself that I had never asked for this, all I wanted was a few mailing addresses. Well, I couldn’t resist. Here were people pouring out their inner thoughts and heartfelt statements of life history. One of which seemed familiar until I realized it was close to my own sad tale of growing up a middle child in a family of five.
Suddenly I was hooked, I began one two-way conversation that expanded to a three-way or more session and before I realized it I was “networking” with a vengeance. I was swept up in the madness to the point that I couldn’t look back. Driven along by internet addiction like some aged wildebeest, panting and heaving, I staggered forward to keep up with the pack. As on some tropical African savannah, where on all sides trotted wild dogs ready to pull down any straggler, I became a driven man. Bleary-eyed, wrist aching, head and forefingers throbbing (I never learned to touch type), I’d fall into bed at 2 in the morning, muttering replies to sleepy questions from my wife, to which I could only answer, “networking.”
I might as well have said, “cocaine,” and let it go at that. And, as with that drug, there were positive and negative side effects. The up side was that my address and contact list grew impressively, my publisher was happy, if I can take a drool as a sign of contentment. I also found I amazed and impressed young people at social functions with my knowledge of blog, my savvy remarks about MySpace poking, or site pimping, or LOLisms.
Strangely, I also underwent a series of what I suppose James Joyce would call epiphanies, moments that initially were highs, but eventually became lows. All those people I went to grade school with, that I shared college rooms with, or traded stories with in late night bull sessions in graduate school, slept with, ran with, worked with, swore eternal friendship with but lost track of, all of them came home to roost. Several nights I woke startled to see them sitting at the foot of our bed.
My screams woke my wife, briefly. She has grown tolerant of my ways.
I suppose what I found was that years ago all that social activity in my youth and middle age was what networking used to be, before IM was invented. But I was not prepared for this, this surge of memories and experiences from the past, these ghosts tugging at my heart. That made me stop and think. Like any other addict, I wondered if maybe I should contain myself, pace myself, get out more in the fresh air...
What’s that you say, FaceBook is now open to the public!” “What, you aren't on YouTube!” “What! You can get me free HTML codes for site templates?...” and so it goes, and may the gods forgive me.
I left his office and arrived home where my wife suggested I start with our Christmas card list. This is a job I normally hate. Every November I face it with distaste, but now I realized that this list was the equivalent of a gold mine. I even supplemented it with those names of people we had dropped over the years. Presumably just because they didn’t send us a card in return in years gone by, was no reason to exclude them from the privilege I was about to grant them. Given the quality and brilliance of my new book, I was certain they’d jump at the chance to buy it.
Problems immediately arose. Do they still live at the same old address? Were they still alive? Did any of them have sympathetic friends that I could add to my growing list? For answers, I turned to my new computer, and, for me, a host of locator resources that I had previously seldom used, ZoomInfoSearch, SuperPagesPeopleFinder, InfoSpaceWhitePages, Switchboard, Bigfoot, and on and on, dot com.
They worked wonders of course, but from then on my life changed. Not only was I successful in finding names, addresses and telephone numbers, but out spilled web pages with photos, e-mail addresses, Yahoo group message sites, photo albums, MySpace profiles decorated with photos and graphics beyond imagination, often backed up with music, moving figures, videos, slide shows, workplace experiences, opinions, suggestions and offers of every conceivable nature.
I told myself that I had never asked for this, all I wanted was a few mailing addresses. Well, I couldn’t resist. Here were people pouring out their inner thoughts and heartfelt statements of life history. One of which seemed familiar until I realized it was close to my own sad tale of growing up a middle child in a family of five.
Suddenly I was hooked, I began one two-way conversation that expanded to a three-way or more session and before I realized it I was “networking” with a vengeance. I was swept up in the madness to the point that I couldn’t look back. Driven along by internet addiction like some aged wildebeest, panting and heaving, I staggered forward to keep up with the pack. As on some tropical African savannah, where on all sides trotted wild dogs ready to pull down any straggler, I became a driven man. Bleary-eyed, wrist aching, head and forefingers throbbing (I never learned to touch type), I’d fall into bed at 2 in the morning, muttering replies to sleepy questions from my wife, to which I could only answer, “networking.”
I might as well have said, “cocaine,” and let it go at that. And, as with that drug, there were positive and negative side effects. The up side was that my address and contact list grew impressively, my publisher was happy, if I can take a drool as a sign of contentment. I also found I amazed and impressed young people at social functions with my knowledge of blog, my savvy remarks about MySpace poking, or site pimping, or LOLisms.
Strangely, I also underwent a series of what I suppose James Joyce would call epiphanies, moments that initially were highs, but eventually became lows. All those people I went to grade school with, that I shared college rooms with, or traded stories with in late night bull sessions in graduate school, slept with, ran with, worked with, swore eternal friendship with but lost track of, all of them came home to roost. Several nights I woke startled to see them sitting at the foot of our bed.
My screams woke my wife, briefly. She has grown tolerant of my ways.
I suppose what I found was that years ago all that social activity in my youth and middle age was what networking used to be, before IM was invented. But I was not prepared for this, this surge of memories and experiences from the past, these ghosts tugging at my heart. That made me stop and think. Like any other addict, I wondered if maybe I should contain myself, pace myself, get out more in the fresh air...
What’s that you say, FaceBook is now open to the public!” “What, you aren't on YouTube!” “What! You can get me free HTML codes for site templates?...” and so it goes, and may the gods forgive me.
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