Christopher is posting to his Newfangled blog.

Crazy meta right? Well I got the idea from this: In her GOOD blog post entitled "The Art of the Status Update," Oberlin College professor Anne Trubek writes:

"Research (i.e. my Facebook homepage, circa 2:17 p.m. Thursday, January 22, 2009) suggests that Status Updates fall roughly into four categories. 1. Prosaic, or “what I am doing now,” (Jill is baking bread). 2. Informative, or “stuff I found somewhere else” (Jack loves this article from GOOD, followed by URL); 3. Clever and funny (Johnny thinks Obama should be sworn in a few more times, just to be EXTRA safe.; Janey discovered that Michelle Obama’s wardrobe is a divisive topic in water aerobics class, and 4.) Poetic or nonsensical (Josh is watching a parakeet form itself out of ice on the telephone wire; If Jim were a cloud, he would rain Earl Grey tea).

This research leads me to pondering the status of a status update as a literary form, or a form of written expression. Dare we define it?"

Two days later, "anonymous" commented:

"Gerunding is the way to verbify any activity. I’ve been facebooking daily for the past two years. Facebooking refers to any facebook actvity, including updating one’s status. I agree with the author that Status Updates can be categorized, however, I think there are more than four categories. One can write two sentences, one informative and one witty, or any other combination. I’d also like to correct the author of this article. Status updates are in the third person singular: Jill is baking bread. Which makes Status Updates more similar to the news ticker seen on major TV news channels than anything else."

I do agree that there are more than four categories, though I wouldn't say that the synthesis of two is really its own category. There is definitely the quoting song lyrics category (for example, "Bill claims that, here in my car I feel safest of all, I can lock all my doors, it's the only way to live, in cars;" or "Bill is wondering, who's gonna pick you up when you fall, hang up when you call, or pay attention to your dreams??? Not to mention driving you home tonight;" or "Bill is taking what they're giving, because I'm working for a living."). The song lyrics status is a big one for Bill. But I like this approach because it's often a pretty direct way of communicating how you feel without having to come up with something original and clever. If a song does the trick, go with it. I've also noticed that this approach is often taken by those of my Facebook friends who don't necessarily make it a priority to be original all the time. By the way, this was the approach I took last Friday at 6:23pm: "Christopher hears Egypt is nice this time of year." Honestly, I'm not sure what that means.

There is another status category that I'm much less a fan of. I call this one the "Networking Exhibitionist" status. In fairness, it tends to come from those users that sync their Twitter statuses with Facebook so that they don't have to keep up with two platforms. Trust me, you've seen this one; they're usually 70% "@" symbols. Annoying.

I guess I shouldn't be irritated by the Networking Exhibitionists (but I am). After all, the status should be what you want it to be. So, I guess that brings me to identifying six categories. Are there more?