Is it rude to ignore digital karma?

I, like a gaggle of the people of my neurotic generation, like to stay in touch with old acquaintances on facebook. I've discussed in the past the interesting aspects of the server-based "applications" that you can add to your Facebook page, but until recently didn't realize one of the banes of social apps. It all started with the "poke." It's a online "what's up!" It only takes the click of a button, it's basically a way of getting attention and letting someone know you're thinking of them, but it's so easy to execute it's almost meaningless. (Yet you note it has it's own wikipedia entry) But now there are a hundred different types of poke-like application. There are sexy dating poke apps, and gift-giving apps, and rating-type apps. And the problem is, whenever someone wants to send you something with one of these odd little meaningless applications, you have to add that app to the list of ones your own system accepts. The applications themselves are built to spread themselves this way, to get more clicks, to appeal to advertisers as having lots of subscribers, so that someone can make money whenever you send someone a digital martini. I have somewhere around 52 apps on my page. I never look at half of them. They come in waves as new trends sweep through facebook. And I just heard an interesting NPR interview about rudeness, discussing this niche online trend. Is it rude to ignore all of the random application spam that comes onto your facebook? Presumably you know the sender in life. Presumably they are or at one time were your friend, so completely ignoring them should be considered rude. But one could waste and entire day of time and energy sorting through every "naughty gift" or quiz request. What really is the etiquette of an online social network? Which brings me back to my initial question. The latest trendy application is "Send Good Karma." Every time you accept a chunk of digital good karma, you are supposed to send more along down the chain. What the heck is digital karma anyway? Do you get bad karma if you ignore good karma sent to you over the internet, or is this just a chain letter with good marketing... It's a weird philosophy of communication that the information age has brought us to. One wonders if people are meant to be this constantly in touch with each other.

tags: facebook  poke  social  network  karma  friends  etiquette  internet  communication  

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