The online community

My Varsity Christian Fellowship Cell group went through the topic on online community for cell group session on Wedneday. We talked about things like what we think about using online social media such as facebook and blogs to engage others, as well as the manner in which we should interact with others online.

I don’t really know how the internet works, but I would say that it has made interaction amongst human communities so much more fruitful. Indeed, one thing I like about the internet is the ability to interact with people around the world and to communicate with others about things that you are interested in. As an English speaking individual, I am able to interact with many people across the world who uses the language, especially people from the United States and Europe. Moreover, I am able to find interest groups who deals with the same problems that I do and find solutions together.

Regarding social media such as facebook and blogs, I like reading articles that friends and acquaintances whom I have added on facebook post online. It helps me broaden my knowledge and insights of things around the world, and also identify the interest that I may share with my friends on facebook. And I have people on my friends list who post cool and interesting stuff, like renditions of their piano performance, or their dance. And I also have ‘like’ pages on facebook as a way of getting people who are interested to know more about me to know the things that I like.

Facebook is also an interesting forum for me to examine the activities and socialization of friends and acquaintances I know. I suppose being able to see what people communicate to one another on facebook allows me to understand the social process better. I thought it would help me to learn how to socialize from observing the social interactions amongst my peers, like what they do, and what they talk about.

I hope people won’t use the pejorative term ‘stalker’ to describe me. I think we can put a negative spin in the way we interpret an action. But I would prefer to call it an attempt to try to understand people. And I try to develop an interest in people. I believe it would help me better in my social skills by trying to understand people. And I do wish that people would be more interested in me as well

I used to be a personal and private person, but I figured that it doesn’t hurt for me to be more open and express myself. Helps my friends to understand me better, and provides another platform by which I can interact with my friends.

I am actually quite new to blogging, or at least blogging regularly. But from my reading of other blogs out there, I figured that it is a way for me to express myself, and to talk about what happens in my life, and to write about the things that interest me It allows my friends, and those who are interested to know more about me to get to know me better. I figured that it is quite difficult sometimes for me to express myself well in real life. It might be difficult to find good topics for that are suitable for social conversation. So blogging helps me to share about my interest so that people might be know me better and find common areas for conversation, and it help me build contacts with people who are interested in the same things that I am who stumble onto my blog while googling for a particular subject.

I am not really sure what I should blog about, so I am still trying to find my blogging style. I suppose I pick some inspiration from the blogs that I read about. Like I could blog about my personal readings, and my thoughts and ideas about things in life and about the world. Personally, I am quite a spiritual person so I do tend to write a lot about religion. So I blog about things like what is gone through for varsity Christian fellowship sessions and church. I figured I can also try writing about my thoughts from reading on biblical passages from my own personal quiet time. I figured that blogging also allows me to reach out to my non-Christian friends. I suppose they would get to understand Christianity better from what I write about it. But I think I can also try developing an interest in politics and current affairs and write my comments on things. I can also write more about what I read and my thoughts and ideas on them. I hope to write stuff that are inspiring and spiritually uplifting. I thing blogging is also a way to communicate ideas and ask question about the world around us, and to learn more about the world, and to allow friends to come upon the bandwagon in my path in life

It is a way I can communicate to friends as well. I am not sure how my peers interact amongst themselves. I wish I could have some private discovery as to what they say to one another. It is quite possible that there are many conversations going on amongst my friends and their friends which I remain unaware of, and I am missing out on some important things that they might be talking about to one another. But a blog allows you to share or communicate what you want, and to allow your friends to know what is going on in your life, and if they are interested in what you have to say, or want to respond, they can on their own prerogative.

I think it doesn’t hurt to be a little more open in the way we conduct our social interaction. Personally, I am quite open about myself, from my having Asperger’s Syndrome, and about the things that affects me in life, like my tension headache. But I would understand if someone has personal life traumas that they wish not to share with others, or they are afraid of being too open because it may make them vulnerable in certain manner. I am interested to know what goes on in the life of my friends, what they do, the adventures they have, what they feel and think. I think it is possible to secure certain level of privacy by password-restricting the access to one’s blog, or making it a private blog and not revealing the address to anyone except your friends.

I suppose it is a way to keep in touch with one’s contacts in life, through blogs.