(I first posted this on my facebook wall. The inspiration for this of course is a growing number of twitter invites after having spent less than a year getting used to facebook...With profuse apologies to the Bard himself although I'm certainly not he first to poke fun at this famous soliloquy)To twitter, or not to twitter: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler on social networks to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous new apps,
Or to take up arms against a sea of tweets,
And by opposing end them? To ignore: to delete;
No more; and by delete to say we defriend
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That users are heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To ignore, to delete;
To delete: perchance only to deactivate: ay, there's the rub;
For in that deactivation what terms of use may come
When we have shuffled off from this social networking site ,
Must give us pause: there's the wreck
That makes calamity of so long a friend list;
For who would bear the whips and scorns
of countless "friend" requests,
The app abuser's wrong, the prolific gamer's contumely,
The peeve of despised notes, the ads,
The insolence of wall comments and the spurns
That profile pics which merit savage takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a mere mouse click? who would fardels bear,
To lose those links and photos
uploaded once upon a weary night,
But that the dread of something after deactivation,
The undiscover'd fine print whose terms
No user reads, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those app issues we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus web absence does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is pixelated o'er with the pale cast of second thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment (e.g. our day jobs)
With these time sucking capability turns awry,
And lose all real interaction.