Bitten by the microblogging bug

Top on my mind—outside of religious obligations and the spiritual journey Holy Week entails—is how to relax, entertain myself, stay offline longer than usual, and yet maintain my needy Internet accounts: I’ve got a total of 1,483 emails to read in my three email inboxes; my last Twitter post was over two weeks ago; I’ve got 94 invites in Facebook; and I can’t even see any new Multiply posts anymore because of the entries I’ve pinned for future reading. I’m afraid to open my Bloglines account, where I read the gazillion blog fields I’ve subscribed to, because I might just end up reading all day, for catch up purposes. The only happy puppy is Plurk, which I’ve really taken to, because its Karma system has me tamed—and nine points away from Frozen Karma, which means it wouldn’t go down anymore, not even if I missed a whole week of Plurking.

I’ve already got a plan, though, so I won’t drown in updates during my vacation—and reflection—time. For Plurk, I’ve subscribed to the free, though often faulty phplurk.com SMS service. Every day, I will text “maintenance plurks,” perhaps nonsensical messages like, “Hello, everyone! This is a maintenance plurk!” but more likely nonsensical-to-the-general-scheme-of-things-but-interesting-for-my-microblogging-friends-and-fans messages about what I had for breakfast or my newest ukay-ukay find. I have one friend who came up with an ingenious way to maintain her Karma while she’s off to Hong Kong: she has asked me and another friend to guest-plurk for her!

As for Twitter, it’s going on vacation with me. I actually use it more as a side blog for my personal blog, so an “I’m on vacation” message will take care of it. It’s not like I’ve got plenty of followers there, anyway.

My Multiply and Bloglines accounts would have to be visited daily—which makes me glad for free wi-fi service in restaurants as pocket-friendly as McDonald’s. I’ve earmarked 30 minutes a day for both; nothing more. I used to be obsessed about reading all the updates, but now I keep my obsession in check by asking myself if I’d just become a better version of myself from what I’d just read. Of course, the answer is often no.

Facebook, however, is another story. Ever since it changed its layout, it has changed into an ever-growing clutter beast. Every second I get updates on brainless quiz results, people’s wall-to-wall exchanges, photo comments and other unsolicited what-have-yous. It’s annoying on many levels, most of which I could live with, if not for the fact that they get in the way of status updates that I so enjoyed reading, mostly because of the tsismis I pick up.

My Facebook preparations for offline days began as soon as the site released a new feature enabling users to hide quiz results and friend updates. I’ve been hiding liberally since—oftentimes hiding people who flood my page with unwanted updates about their bold star name, the top five books they’d read over and over again, or what designer label suits them best.

Then again, I could just go the route my friend took—she said, “Oh, to heck with it all!” and offered it up as her Lenten sacrifice.

Add ‘em up and add me up too

Celebrities are also taking up microblogging, which is easier to maintain than actual blogging. Famous people who have Twitter accounts include @mrskutcher and @aplusk (Demi and Ashton Kutcher), @schwarzenegger (Arnold Schwarzenegger), @bjork, @barackobama, @david_lynch, @mwtsnx (Emma Watson), @lancearmstrong, @johncmayer and @neilhimself (Neil Gaiman). As for Plurk, the only celebrity I know of so far—and a local one at that—is Bebe Gandanghari as @bbgandanghari.

If you have a Plurk or Twitter account, please add me up. My username for both accounts is @althearicardo.

Email your comments to [email protected] or text them to (63)917-9164421. You can also visit my personal blog at http://althearicardo.blogspot.com.