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Lesley

Grey Matter

12.16.8

Esoterica and Social Networking Sites

After over a year on Facebook and a couple years (at least) on Myspace I have found that they both have pros and cons, but overall I actually enjoy Facebook more.

There may be more esoteric names that everyone knows on Myspace, but most of them simply add friends and don't interact with them. Facebook (which I didn't really like at first), is a more personal site.

The big problem I have with Myspace is that, over the time I have been a member, it seems to have become just somewhere that people promote themselves. People send a friend request, you friend them and then they use your comment section for PR on their new album, book or whatever.

I have over 500 friends on Myspace, but many of them are people that I don't know in any way and often times have nothing in common with. I am not totally putting down Myspace, I have actually met some nice people there and made new friends, but many people just want to add friends so they look popular.

Yes, I could stop accepting friends request from people I don't know, but sometimes those people are actually interested in the esoteric and read my blogs or columns, so it wouldn't be right to deny people simply because I don't know them.

Facebook is different. I actually in some way or another know almost everyone that is on my friends list. There are some really awesome peeps that everyone interested in esoterica has heard of on facebook too, like --Stanton Friedman, Greg Bishop, Adam Gorightly, Bill and Nancy Birnes, Richard and Karyn Dolan, Jon Downes, James Fox, Daniel Pinchbeck, Dean Radin, Jon Ronson, Michael Salla, Karl Shuker, Jerry E. Smith, Pat Uskert, Erich Von Daniken, Steve Bassett, Ryan Wood, Farah Yurdozu and many more. Some other BoA columnists on are Facebook too -- Regan Lee, Tina Sena and Richard Thomas. Tim Binnall is also on Facebook.

I am not even going to get into how addicted I am to certain facebook apps like My Fairy, My Farm and Super Poke Pets. :-) Sorry, I can't keep it all paranormal all of the time.

Aside from Myspace and Facebook, I have tried (to my knowledge) every paranormal social networking site there is. I have not found one that I actually like. A couple started out promising, but whoever was running them seemed to lose interest after a couple months and they kind of withered away. I get the feeling that some of these are started by people who think they will make money off of them and once they realize they aren't going to make much money they don't maintain them or put any effort into them. There seems to be a couple popular paranormal networking sites, but they are more into ghost related topics, so not really my cup of tea.

Last Spring, we were told that Steven Spielberg would be starting a paranormal social networking site, but to my knowledge it still has not surfaced.

Quite honestly, I don't feel there is any real need for paranormal networking sites. A couple years ago I felt differently, but there are now so many people interested in the paranormal on Myspace and Facebook that a paranormal specific site seems kind of silly. Besides that, we all have friends and family members that aren't interested in the paranormal and it is nice to keep in touch with them too.

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