In March, I blogged in response to a column by The Globe and Mail‘s Margaret Wente saying that all bloggers are male (and she’s obviously right; there are no female bloggers out there).

This weekend, Wente once again tried her old-media hand at new media. And, once again, Wente failed in a spectacular fashion.

In “You’re really not that interesting, and neither am I,” Wente talks about how social media (specifically Facebook, with a dash of Twitter thrown in) is utterly ridiculous and that she doesn’t see what the point is. Now Wente’s anti-Twitter stance is no surprise (she hasn’t tweeted from her account since March of 2009).

It’s not that Wente hasn’t tried this whole Facebook-thing (because she says it would be snobby to turn her nose up at something she has no clue about):

I signed up and began friending anyone who asked. I now have 147 friends, almost none of whom I actually know. Most seem very nice. Their tastes and activities are as ordinary as my own. I have 64 unanswered messages, four unreturned pokes and 28 new friend requests. I feel incredibly popular, but also guilty, because I’m not a very good friend. I never tell them anything about myself. I haven’t even put my picture on my Facebook page. I simply don’t believe I’m all that interesting to anyone but me. Besides, it’s none of their business.

Hmm. Well, assuming of the five Margaret Wente’s I found on Facebook this one is actually her, then (like many other people on social media), Wente inflated her friends count. She really has 103.

And on Twitter, of which Wente is such an avid user, she says:

Tweeting strikes me as an even more pointless waste of time. The answer to “What are you doing?” tends to be utterly inane…

My chief problem with Wente’s complaints about social media is that they are so 2006. Really.

I have over 100 friends on Facebook, which I have cut down by choice, I could have more. But I’ve found it’s more rewarding for me to be friends with people on Facebook I actually interact with.

The same goes on Twitter, I follow under 200 people and only follow those who interest me. I’m not interested in the inane status updates. And the people who post those? They tend not to have too many friends/followers either. It’s not just you, Margaret who is not interested in reading those — no one is.

Social media is just that — social. It’s about a discussion, about seeing things in a new light. Wente seems to have a very old-media approach to social media. She says it herself — she doesn’t interact with her “friends” on her Facebook, she watches them interact. She prefers to tell people what to think through her column and not participate in the discussion that results from that.

Other journalists are not like this. There are a number of Canadian journalists and columnists who are active on Twitter, discussing with their readers and not sitting alone knowing they are right and everyone else is wrong. This is the journalism of the future. This is what will save our industry.

And if social media is such a waste of time, I have one question for Margaret Wente: Why is that Facebook like button above your article? Why can I click a button to easily tweet a link to it to everyone in my network?

Why, if my status updates are so inane and boring, would anyone ever want to read anything I recommend on social media? (Even if that update is a link to your article.)