Dopp Juice Archive

I just took inventory, and it’s confirmed. I am a Web Community Junkie. What follows is a list of all the crazy community websites I’m a member of, as well as my gripes and raves about each.

• Livejournal (personal blogs) – Excellent security settings and filters for talking to a specific audience.
• Facebook (school-based communities) – Very good for finding people. Not useful for much else, though.
• Friendster (general networking and blogs) – Also, really just good for finding people.
• My Space (mini-websites) – Overloaded with ads and a very in-your-face design. But good for staying in touch with friends and pulling new people together. Many options.
• Tribe (discussions and classifieds) – Excellent if you live in a city. Not quite so useful if you don’t. I think they need a more thorough system of email notifications so you can subscribe to specific discussion threads… but otherwise they’re very cool.
• The Writ (writing workshop/publication) – Very cool for getting feedback on writing and for getting published. Needs forums and email notifications, but those are coming soon (I swear!).
• OK Cupid (quizzes and people-meeting) – Similar to My Space in flashiness, but the best free source for late-night mind-numbing personal tests around. Also pretty cool for connecting with people, but very singles-focused.

Are there any big ones that I’m missing here? I need to solidify my status as Web Community Junkie by joining (and analyzing) every one possible.

Actually, I can already tell you what crazy thing I’ve done since the breakup. I bought a Treo. Did I need a new phone? Yes. My old one dropped dead. Did I have a compelling reason to buy a PDA? Yes. I want to use Chinese Dictionary software for looking up characters, and I’ve been lacking a central system of organization. Will it be worth the extra $15/mo to have unlimited web access and be able to take and send pictures with this gadget? That’s to be determined. But I bet it will help me blog better and more often. I have 30 days to bring this bank-account-reduction back to the Sprint store. I can at least have some fun with it in the meantime.

How do you reemerge from a cocoon you had no intention of being sucked into? There are no apologies to be made. No excuses to drum up. Just a mild embarassment that you’ve allowed yourself to be immersed in life for a little while. So what happened? Why did I disappear from the web? Well, my boyfriend and I broke up. “Broke up” is a horrible term for this situation because it carries a trite junior high school connotation. But if I were to say, “the intense relationship that has carried me for two years and that I believed would last forever has fallen to pieces in the palm of my hand,” you’d call me dramatic. So let’s just leave it as a breakup. I’ve been inundated with heavy conversations for the past month, I haven’t slept more than a few hours for the past few days, and quite frankly I’m a little concerned about getting through the semester. So lets change the tone to something lighter. The Top Ten Things I’ve Done After a Breakup (in random order)

1. Shaved my head.
2. Changed schools.
3. Went skydiving.
4. Dyed my bangs fire engine red.
5. Seduced a gay man.
6. Went into therapy.
7. Started a magazine.
8. Changed jobs.
9. Flew to China.
10. Tried to drive to the Grand Canyon from NH to “get some air.”

Stay tuned for what will happen after this one. In the meantime, how about I get back to my old self and fill your RSS readers with useful web tips and crazy San Francisco anecdotes? Can you handle that?