Hello Brick Wall, this is Head.
"And THAT, my friend, is where you totally miss the point."
No, jake, it really isn't. I can see your point clumsily trying to raise itself onto its feet from several miles away.
"If you have an Internet[tm] connected machine set up by yourself, by definition you have set up your own networking services. "
And where does my gran, or anyone else untechnical fit into that? And where does one post an invite to a party on such a system. A node isn't a network you know. And a computer network isn't a social network You have to connect. You have to talk. So where does one post? Ones DNS server? Your personal website? Everyone's personal website?
"Most people using !GooMyFaceYouMSTwit have no idea as to the implications of this concept."
See above.
"They don't grok the fact that their personal information is being used (en-mass) by multi-billion dollar international marketing companies. "
Some do, some don't. Some folk don't understand a whole bunch of stuff. So what? Those that do understand that their personal information is being sold and use the services anyway have made a cost-benefit analysis and decided that use of the service is worth the price. That doesn't make them stupid. It just means they have different values from you. People are different, jake. Can you wrap your mind around that? I'd hate to live on a planet that was populated with jakes. As woud you.
"Do you really not understand this? "
Understand what? I understand that some people aren't very clever, I understand that some people trade data for services, I understand a whole bunch of stuff. I think you spilled a little Dunning Kruger down your front.
"Or are you a shill for one of said companies?"
Another lame ad hominem, jake.
Are you a shill for whichever company you bought your laptop from? I mean, you gave them money in exchange for a product. What an idiot! You could have hand-crafted one from the metal you've mined from them thar hills.
"We use modern communications, but for the most part most of us see each other face-to-face a couple-four times a month, or more, and that's how we communicate."
And via your personal website of course. Don't forget that.
As it happens, I'll be back in California tomorrow. It still won't look anything like the bumfuck you pretend it to be. And don't give me some crap about "oh well here in Sonoma ...", because you drove down to Whole Foods the moment you couldn't find any fucking seaweed. You redneck-wannabe hipster douche.