Getting Better...Together

Musings on trying to make a difference in healthcare.

New Community Across the Ages

Submitted by gwilsonsteele on Fri, 03/21/2008 - 02:54.

Today I joined the new AARP online community. I’ve been receiving member solicitations from them since I was 47 years old, and in disgust threw them immediately into the trash. By the time I finally became AARP-eligible at 50, I was not inclined to open any of their mail…ever. Opening AARP mail is admitting that you are getting OLD!

So why then, would I join the community at AARP.org? First, the site is very attractive and well laid out. A lot of attention has been paid to ease of use, and the member registration process has been made as simple as possible. A friendly wizard takes you screen by screen through building a profile page, so before I knew it, I had shared my residences, hobbies, personal background and pictures. This was not intimidating, and in fact, was bringing out the “coolness” in me. In over 50 years I’ve been around, seen a lot, and have some interesting stuff to share.

Plus I figure any other old person who has ventured into an online community, and is posting videos, writing journals and tagging their content has got to be pretty cool too.

What I may have found is the MySpace and FaceBook for the Over-50’s set. Who would have thought that a bunch of old folks who learned to type on an Oliver and did physics calculations on a slide rule, would find themselves convening in an online community? These people are not Over-the-Hill; they (we) are just beginning to build a new Internet dimension…one that spans the globe and a century of experience.

So now I shall admit that I’m a URL-carrying member of AARP.org. Maybe I’ll get my college kid to make a video of me riding my horse or working in my vineyard to prove I do all those things I wrote in my profile. Maybe I’ll join a Group. Maybe I’ll connect with jen43…she wrote that she enjoyed my Journal.