By Siti Syameen Md Khalili

SOME friends have resorted to nicknaming this writer a "semi-Luddite", thanks to my non-existence on the most popular social networking site (SNS) that many have become addicted to.

"Everyone else is there, you have to get on board!" said a friend.

"I have found so many old friends through the network; it's nice catching up with them online," quipped another.

Well, that's just my problem. I hate "catching up" with friends online. "Send a smile" or "poke" is not satisfying communication for me.

I prefer a night out at a teh tarik joint, where the guys and gals show up one by one. Some will be happy, some will be glum. You would be able to tell right away if she had finally found the perfect dress by the grin she wears, or he had broken up with his fifth girlfriend by the way he is dressed, all simply by one look. No need to type "Wassup?", or click on "/:)" or ":-?" to ask what is going on.

Of course, many of us have friends living in other States or abroad, so there's no denying that SNSes such as Friendster, Facebook and Hi5 are a great way to keep in touch. But for this writer, nothing compares to hearing the shrieks and squeals of delight every time I pick up a friend from the airport, or having late nights filled with mindless chat and discrete gossip, complete with harmless slaps on the back and long handshakes before parting.

Yours truly is not the only person not on SNS. Another friend, who also works in the technology industry, recently admitted that he is not on SNS as well. The main reason: He doubts the sincerity of some of the people who are trying a bit too hard to get him to accept their invitation.

"A few of my schoolmates and collegemates are not worth keeping in touch with. All they want to do is to hook you up to their network, then arrange for a so-called chill-out session. Before you know it, you end up at a multi-level marketing talk. The few of them really spoil the fun in networking for me," he lamented.

He believes that is how some people behave on SNS. "They keep in touch with friends, patch up lost ties, make new ones on a personal level, then exploit the pool of contacts on a professional level," he said.

I did not dare remind him that such a thing can happen outside SNS; after all, spam is just the beginning.

Another excuse for not jumping onto the SNS bandwagon: fear of addiction. As described by a friend who had abandoned her SNS account for almost a year, "I started at home and soon found myself logging in via my office desktop - and it was not even lunchtime."

Apart from staying connected to the people on your friends list, a strong lure of SNS is the space given for sharing cool items such as photos, videos and applications among friends. While I am already sharing photos and videos through other means, perhaps more compelling applications might just be the thing that will sway me to the other side.