4 Comments

  1. Lord knows I have done my share of lurking — AND been lurked. But here’s the thing: connection still takes 2 people. Your suggestion to “Find a common interest, share a personal story, ask a question. Whatever! But make it substantial” is completely valid.

    But it’s possible that you can attempt a deeper, more meaningful connection online and still get no response. (Just like in the offline world.) At that point, seems to me, you can unfriend the lurker or just let them lurk…

    “Lurkerdom” may be more prevalent in my generation (born early 1960’s) because we didn’t have the social media in our formative years and now we (some of us, anyway) are merely hopping on the bandwagon to be hip w/o changing our regular habits of connecting.

    Offline, in many cases, we hadn’t been connected for years w/ some of these people who are now “friends” on FB. We just connect, perhaps, out of politeness.

    1. @Cathy – GREAT points, Cathy. I really like your insight. I completely agree that sometimes no matter what you do, there are those you are never going to be able to connect with – and thus, you either continue to lurk or purge! Thanks for the comment.

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