Wed 15 Oct 2008
Not That I’m a Misanthrope, But I Don’t Have Time for Chit-Chat
Posted by Fredric Koeppel under Wine blogs[5] Comments
About once a week I get an email with a link to a new “wine social network” designed to be an outlet where people can chat about wine and their wine experiences and share opinions.
Well, it’s not that I’m misanthropic, antisocial or stand-offish (here LL would chime in with “Well, you’re a little stand-offish”), but I don’t have time for it. Sure, I joined Open Wine Consortium 
when it was launched. How many times have I been on the site? Um, maybe once. Twitter wine tastings? The monthly wine book review? All worthy endeavors, I’m sure, but I don’t have time for them.
I mean, how do people carve the temporal and psychic space to chat about wine and exchange opinions, all quite helpful, I warrant, when I can barely find time to taste wine and make notes and keep up with this blog? I mean, I’m trying to do 15 to 18 posts a month, and my job as a full-time journalist at my newspaper and keep up with our five dogs and two cats and the puppies we foster for rescue groups and practice the piano, because I’m taking lessons again for the first time since I was in college (and this is a whole other story) and all the various other jobs, chores, duties and pleasures of what we call life. Yard work. Reading and sleeping. Keeping up with some favorite blogs. Which, I’m sure, everybody else does too. I wouldn’t deny it.
But I sit at a computer at work five days a week and then I sit at a computer at home doing research and writing this blog, and I’ll tell you the truth, if the choice is between eating a dinner that LL or I cooked (or we cooked together) and drinking a really good (or great) bottle of wine or maybe trying a couple of wines, and the candles are lit and music is filtering through the air and the dogs lie about us on the floor in various attitudes of slumber, I say, if the choice is between that or sitting at the keyboard in the lurid light of the computer screen social networkiing about a bottle of wine with someone I don’t know — well, do I even have to say what my choice would be?
So, I’m not trying to be a jerk or a snob. Go ahead and social network about wine all you want. If that’s a valuable use of time for you, have at it.
But count me out. I have too much work to do.
October 16th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Fredric,
We must be kindred souls, right down to the piano, although I don’t take lessons–just play.
I’m not only amazed that people find so much time to chat about wine online, but many do it on multiple sites. I know this, because part of my job is to scan the sites for information, and I admit that I get sucked into “conversations” more than I have time to do so.
Like you, however, I am shunning all new offers to join: need sleep.
October 16th, 2008 at 8:59 am
I have found myself spending less time in wine-related internet forums over the years. I prefer the freedom of writing on my own sites so I can write what I want without having to follow other people’s rules.
I also feel that I would like the copyright of my posts to remain with me, and not have to rely on other people to keep by posts backed up and in a secure manner.
October 16th, 2008 at 10:24 am
I’ll add my 2 cents. It’s overload time with social networks and blogs. I don’t have the time or the inclination to read as many as I used to, and I kind of don’t want to get involved in — sucked into — them. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the phenomenon, it’s just that you feel you’ve stepped into an alternate reality sometimes.
To be really topical, it’s like the strange world of political punditry vs. the real world where the citizens live and observe their “leaders” in action. Often there’s very little relation between the two. That’s a problem for everybody.
October 21st, 2008 at 9:21 pm
It’s like you’ve been reading my diary–if I had time to write one.
October 22nd, 2008 at 6:09 am
Winebroad: Ha, I know what you mean. In a way our blogs are our diaries, though in a narrow sense.