Yesterday morning, I read that the number of people on Facebook is on the threshold of exceeding the number of people who live in the U.S. To borrow the words of Ann, a very gracious older woman who ran the mailroom for an organization I worked for 20 years ago, that’s not good.
Like millions of others – 300 million, to be precise – I too got caught up in the Facebook craze. I signed up, added friends, posted a Warhol-ized photograph of myself. My profile included my real name, the city where I live, the college I went to and my birthday. It’s really stupid, if you think about it, to share that sort of information via the Internet.
I have to admit, it was fun. I have a lot of long-distance friends, and it was nice to click on photo albums and see pictures of their newborns, their remodeled homes, new hairdos and fireworks with the Hong Kong skyline in the background. It was also fun to happen across familiar names and then troll their friends’ list, discovering, quite by accident, many dubious “friendships” along the way. And finding that my high school graduating class had its own Facebook page was like hitting the jackpot. I savored the visual evidence that almost every boy I lusted after in the early 1980s is now a fat slob who looks at least 10 years older than I know he is.
And then, for some reason, it got really, really stupid. Let’s start with the status updates. I know of several people who update their status every single day without fail with a few words about how exhausted they are because they had such an insanely busy day and why oh why aren’t there more hours? I know people who post the results of those ridiculous quizzes at least once a week and usually more. Which of the Brady Bunch are you? What interior decorating style best suits your personal style? If you were a Bob Dylan song, which one would you be? Which Star Trek character would you be most likely to marry? At the end of each week eight of my “friends” take the time to write that they’re very glad it’s Friday. And I know more than a few people who write shit like this: Susie is so thankful to everyone who sent good wishes her way during this very difficult time. Those sorts of updates are followed, usually, by a flurry of drooling comments by those in the know, while everyone else wonders … One woman I used to work with posted a comment about how much it irritates her when people who never post comments see her – in person, with their eyes – and mention something about her that they wouldn’t know if they hadn’t read it on Facebook. And how dare people, this woman wrote, get on Facebook but never make comments? There was of course a torrent of comments beneath her status update. Hell yeah! they said. The losers! They’re stalkers! That’s creepy! They should be banned from FB!! Perhaps they were just L-ing OL, or :) ing together, but the angry tone of the whole thing was a bit alarming.
In June I had lunch with a friend of mine, a real lunch with a real person at a real restaurant, where we sat outside and enjoyed the shade provided by a real tree. “I cancelled my Facebook page last night,” my friend said. “I’m sick of the shit.” If he hasn’t been in touch with someone for a decade or more, my friend explained, there’s a good reason for it and he was tired of being “friended” by people he hadn’t talked to since Bill Clinton’s first term. I had sent this friend an e-mail over the winter, by the way, asking him if he wanted to get together sometime soon. “I’m kind of busy,” he’d replied, “just sitting here Facebooking my life away!” And here he was, a few months later, sitting outdoors, liberated. His recovery was inspiring.
I’m embarrassed to admit that deactivating my Facebook account required prompting from someone else, but it did. I love spending time with people, I love talking with people and listening to people and learning more about people. I love meeting up for coffee and talking on the phone. I like to sprawl out on the couch and read books and I like riding the bus and going to the grocery store. Going downtown for a gossipy two-hour lunch is my heroin. I live on e-mail, and I’m on the Internet most of the day, and I love writing my blog. I think technology is useful for many things, but Facebook somehow had the power to stain the entire day with an odd, low-grade sort of despair, kind of like having the flu. It became the anti-connection. Here we all sit, I thought, dying to be interesting. I don’t toss this word around casually, but Facebook, for me, was depressing. I deactivated my account on a balmy Monday morning in June, and although my information is still in the system – beware: Facebook owns everything you post, always and forever, period – it’s no longer possible for me to send or receive friend requests, or to post status updates, or to comment on those posted by others. While it’s a day-by-day existence when you’re living on the other side of Facebook, I am surviving without it.
Like millions of others – 300 million, to be precise – I too got caught up in the Facebook craze. I signed up, added friends, posted a Warhol-ized photograph of myself. My profile included my real name, the city where I live, the college I went to and my birthday. It’s really stupid, if you think about it, to share that sort of information via the Internet.
I have to admit, it was fun. I have a lot of long-distance friends, and it was nice to click on photo albums and see pictures of their newborns, their remodeled homes, new hairdos and fireworks with the Hong Kong skyline in the background. It was also fun to happen across familiar names and then troll their friends’ list, discovering, quite by accident, many dubious “friendships” along the way. And finding that my high school graduating class had its own Facebook page was like hitting the jackpot. I savored the visual evidence that almost every boy I lusted after in the early 1980s is now a fat slob who looks at least 10 years older than I know he is.
And then, for some reason, it got really, really stupid. Let’s start with the status updates. I know of several people who update their status every single day without fail with a few words about how exhausted they are because they had such an insanely busy day and why oh why aren’t there more hours? I know people who post the results of those ridiculous quizzes at least once a week and usually more. Which of the Brady Bunch are you? What interior decorating style best suits your personal style? If you were a Bob Dylan song, which one would you be? Which Star Trek character would you be most likely to marry? At the end of each week eight of my “friends” take the time to write that they’re very glad it’s Friday. And I know more than a few people who write shit like this: Susie is so thankful to everyone who sent good wishes her way during this very difficult time. Those sorts of updates are followed, usually, by a flurry of drooling comments by those in the know, while everyone else wonders … One woman I used to work with posted a comment about how much it irritates her when people who never post comments see her – in person, with their eyes – and mention something about her that they wouldn’t know if they hadn’t read it on Facebook. And how dare people, this woman wrote, get on Facebook but never make comments? There was of course a torrent of comments beneath her status update. Hell yeah! they said. The losers! They’re stalkers! That’s creepy! They should be banned from FB!! Perhaps they were just L-ing OL, or :) ing together, but the angry tone of the whole thing was a bit alarming.
In June I had lunch with a friend of mine, a real lunch with a real person at a real restaurant, where we sat outside and enjoyed the shade provided by a real tree. “I cancelled my Facebook page last night,” my friend said. “I’m sick of the shit.” If he hasn’t been in touch with someone for a decade or more, my friend explained, there’s a good reason for it and he was tired of being “friended” by people he hadn’t talked to since Bill Clinton’s first term. I had sent this friend an e-mail over the winter, by the way, asking him if he wanted to get together sometime soon. “I’m kind of busy,” he’d replied, “just sitting here Facebooking my life away!” And here he was, a few months later, sitting outdoors, liberated. His recovery was inspiring.
I’m embarrassed to admit that deactivating my Facebook account required prompting from someone else, but it did. I love spending time with people, I love talking with people and listening to people and learning more about people. I love meeting up for coffee and talking on the phone. I like to sprawl out on the couch and read books and I like riding the bus and going to the grocery store. Going downtown for a gossipy two-hour lunch is my heroin. I live on e-mail, and I’m on the Internet most of the day, and I love writing my blog. I think technology is useful for many things, but Facebook somehow had the power to stain the entire day with an odd, low-grade sort of despair, kind of like having the flu. It became the anti-connection. Here we all sit, I thought, dying to be interesting. I don’t toss this word around casually, but Facebook, for me, was depressing. I deactivated my account on a balmy Monday morning in June, and although my information is still in the system – beware: Facebook owns everything you post, always and forever, period – it’s no longer possible for me to send or receive friend requests, or to post status updates, or to comment on those posted by others. While it’s a day-by-day existence when you’re living on the other side of Facebook, I am surviving without it.
