So My Opera is closing. As you can see from the post below this one, I haven’t been here for a while. Not that I’ve given up on it, but I’ve been a bit distracted with things: work, community activities, managing cancer treatment…life, in other words.
Still, I was sad to hear that My Opera going. I think the community here is fabulous. People from all over the world, interacting in a way they don’t on Facebook. FB’s good for keeping in touch with people you actually know (friends and family), but not for strangers. Short status updates don’t give you the measure of a person. Sites like My Opera do, and that’s what been so great about it.
I’ve always liked the way it’s easy to find people from Asia, the Middle East, and central and eastern Europe on MyOpera, and chat without them thinking you’re being creepy (I hope), although there are plenty of creepy men commenting on photos of attractive women/girls (get real, guys, she’s not interested). I have been in contact with such great and suprising people – I even chatted once with a Scottish guy who went to the same school my father went to in Dundee (although not at the same time, i.e. late 1920s-mid-1930s).
And then two days ago I chatted with a Danish guy (FlaRin) because he has posted a copy of The Front Lawn’s (a New Zealand theatre and music group) fabulous short movie ‘The Lounge Bar’ (http://my.opera.com/FlaRin/blog/2012/12/14/song-of-the-week-36). He’d lived in New Zealand, and liked our music, so of course I thought he was a great guy.
I’ll miss that sort of serendipitous connection. It looks like I’ll be heading over the WordPress with many of the other My Opera refugees. I am on Google+ but it doesn’t seem to offer the same functionality (more a microblogging site like Facebook than My Opera was). I might hang around for a while longer, now that I’m remade my connection with My Opera, but it will be adiós sooner or later.
As I said the other day... 