I have decided that I no longer need to inform my friends about the details of my life. Facebook can do it for me.
While on the phone with my friend the other day, she asked me what I had been up to lately. As I began to tell her she stopped me.
“Oh, I knew you did that already,” she said.
When I asked her how, she very simply stated that she had seen the pictures on Facebook.
Of course she did. We no longer need verbal communication; with text messaging and profiles that are supposed to sum up our entire identities based on categories such as “favorite movie,” or the ever-important “about me” section, a sense of personal interaction has been lost within what we view as technological progress. Personally I’m a little concerned that these advancements are going to end up leaving us completely detached from personal interaction and living in a world of hologram figures and computer-formatted greetings.
Okay, well, that may be just a bit too far. But, I think it is important for a moment to realize just how very creepy and completely unnecessary Facebook actually is.
Back in the olden days, people would write letters; they would meet people on the street, hang out with them a bit and then, perhaps, during a verbal conversation, refer to their new acquaintance as their friend. It took a bit of work – a hearty, formal introduction, but this was a time when the word “friend” actually held some sort of meaning. But now we have a word that signifies a friendship but that only indicates that you might have only met the person; it means nothing. And how strange is that? All of sudden you’re now “friends.” Does this bring you closer? Can you now borrow each other’s clothes, braid each other’s hair? Is it now okay for this new individual in your life to watch over your pet fish when you’re out of town?
The problem, however, is that now there is no means of escaping this. Yes, you could just bail out on Facebook and decide that you are far too enlightened to conform to the cult phenomenon – but really, what are you left with? I’ll be honest, I’ve considered it – imagine the wonder: You would no longer have to wake up the morning after a few too many glasses of wine to an e-mail saying there are pictures of you posted on the Internet, meaning you could avoid the horrible head smacking moment when you realized that you were a bit more out of control then the cloudy version you had left in your mind. And this would be wonderful – wonderful, until you went over to your friend Jimmy’s house and stood around his computer, where he was looking at these new pictures posted on Facebook. You would see these pictures, realizing that while your name was not connected to the image, the picture still existed for everyone else to see, and then you had another head-smacking moment when you realized that your out-of-control moment has an audience. An audience, in fact, which takes great pleasure in helping you reminisce about your idiocy.
It’s not just the pictures, though, that is driving me insane – it’s more the stalker nature of Facebook, which has somehow become socially acceptable. We are now condemned to know exactly what time our friend decided that Jurassic Park no longer ranks within her top 10 favorite movies, or when she officially broke up with her boyfriend. While many of these things gain a joke-like status, it seems like we are overwhelmed with too much information.
It is this massive amount of trivial information that I think will ultimately be the most obnoxious, poisonous creation of our generation. While it’s great to be able to maintain friendships with people you could have otherwise lost as a result of distance or circumstance, at some point you have to move on to present times. Will there be a Facebook for the work force? Will you “poke” your boss? And if you did, would that be weird? Or perhaps even sexual harassment? I don’t know, but I must admit that I hope it stops somewhere.
Ultimately, though, my great distress over Facebook stems from my narcissistic need to recap the tales of my evening to an eager audience. Because we all know, once she saw the pictures she didn’t need to hear my rendition of the story.
ehemson@dailyemerald