This is a guest post from close friend and writer Christina Kingston, who blogs over at CtKingston.com and is one of my 10 Bloggers to Watch in 2010.

If you’re online right now then…

Who’s watching rickety, old, near-death grandpa?
Who’s feeding the children?
Who’s French kissing the wife?

I was chatting with good friend and fellow blogger, Danny Brown, randomly discussing a multitude of topics. We touched upon one that made us both laugh.

The questions above, though harrowing, propelled a few snickers in regards to the “topic” we chuckled over, which boils down to web time spent versus real life squandered.

Danny suggested I write it up as a guest post on his site, but as time passed and rough drafts got cranked out, scattering by my desk side, I began to feel this particular blog might be too offensive for many of my career-oriented, married-with-children friends. It might even be offensive to my very close single friends who are sadly barren, unloved, lonely, and all alone without a clue how to survive in the workplace. I love these people.

Normally I have no problem being aggressive in prose or real life. I can easily blame my parents for this failing and that’s always a relief. Someone to blame. Once in a while I phone my folks, thanking them profusely for being such rotters. So rotten that their actions provided me with an infinite excuse. They hate those calls, but so be it, suck on it Ma and Pa! They know what they’ve done.

But this blog thing… I thought maybe I could just soft-pedal the initial idea so as not to appear accusatory of anyone I personally know, the ones who give the web their undivided attention, meanwhile habitually ignoring their wives, husbands, bfs, gfs, friends, children, jobs…

But no way, that’s what the whole piece was supposed to be about — the anti-social aspects of social networking as it pertains to the love showered on strangers, as opposed to the rampant disregard for those closest to us.

Although I see this kind of neglect often, I certainly wouldn’t map out anyone’s Internet timeline to prove how nearly impossible it’d be to find space where they might have had a moment to ask, “Hi kids, how was school?”  Or even microwave a meal for themselves. And the married ones, do they ever talk with their spouses? They are online far too often to have sex with them, that’s clear.

And is the company they work for paying any attention to their sloppy work ethic? How much longer can these people keep a job? How many of these human animals once had an active social life, solid relationship and successful career only to blindly watch it dwindle while they squander away the hours on a social networking site? This question seemed like a good, possibly very serious blog idea.

But the more I spun it the more it felt potentially a tiny-bit rude.

I’m sure others will and or have tackled this dilemma. However, this kind of dicey subject will probably never be written by me.

But I’ll still wonder, “Who is feeding the children?” I also might think, “It’s no wonder your mate is cheating on you,” and occasionally imagine, “Of course your company flounders and you have zero job security.” I kinda might ponder such things every once in awhile, but I sure won’t be bringing it up in public.

Maybe Danny will… You’ll have to ask him. Actually don’t ask him, I doubt either one of us has much interest in that sort of discussion.

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