The good folks of tumblr have a succinct counter-argument to suggestions like this. It is, and I quote:
"durr hburr technology is bad fire is scary and thomas edison was a witch"
"durr hburr technology is bad fire is scary and thomas edison was a witch"
"Not having an online presence" makes as much sense as "not having a presence at the pub" or "refusing to talk to people as a principle - isn't that so 'awesome'?"
It's fine, you don't need to be on every silly new 2.0 dot com, no issue there.
But you're shutting yourself out of a means of communication with other people. The fact that it involved technology is a detail
You can go to the pub and not drink, you can use FB with a fake name and not do anything with it and you can choose an email provider that suits you, but shutting yourself out does not make sense
It does make sense, your Facebook/Twitter/... presence doesn't go away when you go to bed or go on holiday, it's always there to be ogled at, poke and prodded, unlike your non-presence in the pub when you stagger off home at closing time.
Not quite- if I don't make it to the pub one night, people just brush it off and think "I'll talk to him next time."
People seem much more vitriolic if I don't respond to whatever internet/text message they sent with near immediacy- because it's always available.
It seems like there's a shut-off valve with the pub, or a land-line and answering machine- not so with facebook, texting, what have you.
I have to agree with you on this one. But I believe it suffices to say that no, you're not looking at email/fb/whatsapp/whatever all the time (and acting like that)
Seriously, I had to read that line twice to realize that it was intended sarcastically. I think I just Poe's Law-ed myself.