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“There is Nothing Normal about Facebook”
As a long time pooh-pooherof new-fangled technology like Blackberries, Twitter, and call waiting, Ialways felt a self-righteous jolt of superiority when friends talked aboutbeing plugged into those online social networks. I’m a 21st century Ludditeat heart (except for cable TV…and don’t even think about taking away my umbilical cord to email!) who recentlyjoined Facebook by accident.
A beloved friend, Dan, who himself was limping onto Facebook only due to curiosity and a dare from histeenage niece, invited me onto his Facebook page. Actually, his niece invitedevery soul in his email address book – personal, professional and forgotten –tojoin him on Facebook, much to Dan’s horror. Since he is an organic, CSA farmerwho steps as lightly on the Earth as anyone I know, I figured that if Danny-boywas treading into the virtual friendship waters, it would be okay for me tokeep him company there. So with one click, I accepted his invitation andlaunched into a whole new world. Little did I know that, appalled by theimpersonal Facebook invitation sent out to all his contacts, Farmer Danhigh-tailed it off Facebook, retreating to the normalcy of real life like a pighot-footing it to the barn at feeding time.
Coward.
For those of you are stillhiding behind your feelings of offline supremacy, Facebook is an online socialnetwork that facilitates virtual “interpersonal connections” with friends,co-workers, like-minded folks, and, primarily as far as I can tell, blasts fromyour past. For someone bornpre-internet like me, Facebook is an utterly bizarre simulated reality that isfreakish in its concurrent addictiveness and repulsiveness.
The central support beamof Facebook is the Status Update. When I first ventured into Facebook waters amere four months ago, the status update was a prompt to report exactly what youwere doing at that moment, which was then dispersed over the Facebook masses.Literally, it read, “What are you doing now?” Some Zen-like Facebook newbies inmy demographic initially balked at that request. They exclaimed, “What am Idoing now? Do they mean this exact moment?Well, right now I am typing on the computer. And forever more all my posts onFacebook will read that I am right now typing on the computer.” One of my moreethical friends complained that she hated having to “lie” on her Facebook pagewhen she wrote that she was going shopping instead of telling the truth (thetruth being she was typing on the computer.) So on the very basest level,Facebook is a big, fat lie.
With the most recent retoolingof the Facebook page, the status update now reads “What is on your mind?” Thisis a bald-faced effort to be more temporally flitting; in other words, moreTwitter-esque. And though we are no longer forced to tell untruths to ouronline community, it still feels warped. “What is on your mind?” Really? Youreally want to know what’s on my mind? Well, no. I say no. Because what is onmy mind is probably either too banal, self-indulgent or x-rated to divulge evento the unseen masses. So I am forced to invent something that I would ratherhave on my mind in order to present myself as witty or intellectual orbad-assed or mysterious or hopefully all of the above. So once again, we’reback at square one: On its basest level, Facebook is a big, fat lie.
Getting past that, ontosquare two, I was left to wonder why people would want to know what I’m doing or thinking right now. Most of thetime, my life lacks even an iota of glamour. I spend a lot of time cleaningplaces that will get dirty, emptying dishwashers that will be refilled, andbuying stuff that will be consumed. Certainly not the stuff of compellingreading. A hamster on a wheel has a more varied life. And to turn the spotlightoff me, why do I want to know what Facebook denizens are doing or thinkingright now? Do I really need to know that some guy I sort of knew in middleschool, who now lives 1,500 miles away, is headed to the gym to work out?
Spoiler alert: The answeris yes. Yes, for some reason I do enjoy knowing that my college housemate iscleaning up basset hound barf somewhere in Ohio. And it interests me that thegirl who enjoyed chemistry class with me in high school
