My beef with Facebook isn’t really that the site is run by content-stealing jerks (see Facebook’s response here). And has nothing to do with this or the fact that it is probably some DARPA project. And I don’t mind that it encourages narcissism. And this is not about the hyper-annoying and now-hopefully-finished “25 things about me” meme. It’s more that getting regular updates about my “friends” is really just a daily reminder of either a) the lameness of the lives of my “friends” or b) my elitism and alienation because I render those judgments.
A few recent status updates illustrate my point:
“Xxx is waiting for her hubby to come and share some of the chocolate lava cake she just made for him.”
I think everyone has a few of these. The person voted “most intellectual” by your high school senior class is now a full time housewife who uses the term “hubby” without irony and wants the entire Facebook world to know that she is making some dude a cake. And from the looks of the pictures, chocolate cake is a big part of their diet.
Sure, that’s superficial. It’s not fair to judge someone’s life based on the fact that they never built a career. Or that they put on a ton of weight. Then again, there are valid reasons for feeling at least a hint of dismay that the brilliant didn’t share their smarts with the larger world or the beautiful ones couldn’t stay that way. And I have no problem with eating cake with someone I love, but I also don’t tell the world that’s what I’m doing. Are my friends, these people I respect(ed), really so insecure about their relationships that they need to broadcast that they have healthy ones? Perhaps I just went to a bad high school, but pretty much every single high school person I have “re-discovered” on Facebook is doing something depressing … such as nothing.
“Xxx is glad that she didn’t eat the box of Girl Scout cookies in lieu of going to the gym.”
And then if they’re not publicly packing on the pounds en route to Life as Spherical American Consumer, they’re bragging to you about exercise. Thanks for sharing about how many reps you did. We were all so very interested. It’s good to know so many productive members of our nation are busy keeping trim and telling the world about it. Maybe next week, they’ll have 45 chin ups in a row and then a marathon.
“Xxx is madly in love with his wife, even the day after Valentine’s!”
Really? Either your wife is so incredibly lame as to be impressed by the fact that you say things like this about her to the wider world, or you have some kind of bizarre inadequacy requiring you to broadcast signs of heterosexual harmony to the universe. Maybe both. I’m thinking both. These kinds of 7th-grade declarations of affection for someone you’re married to can only be compared with those (sometimes overlapping) groups of Facebookers who actually write vapid messages to their spouses on each others’ walls. “Honey, I’m getting some tapioca at the store on the way home!” “I just wanted to tell you Good Luck at the interview honey!” “I love you!”
“Xxx is making cooing and gurgling noises at her baby.”
There are a lot of these. Obviously, as a 30-something, a lot of friends are getting married and making babies. Does this really need to be shared with the entire world? You made a fucking baby. Wow. Happens almost a billion times a year on the planet Earth. While I’m sure the endless parade of baby pictures is a Facebook staple, I’m happy to have managed to have avoided most of those photo albums. I’m changing diapers! Let me go make a status update change!
“Xxx is wondering why her child isn’t home from her dad’s house. There’s school tomorrow!”
Once kids are born, you get into this sort of thing. Thank goodness we users of Facebook get to share in your custody battles. How nice that we get to be depressed about the bizarre neuroses your child is developing. We’ll look forward to those status updates about your court dates.
“Xxx is getting ready to ask some tough questions in the deposition.”
Oh yeah! You’re such a bad-ass. Thanks for sharing your kick-ass professional plans with the rest of the world. This is particularly common among lawyers (which happens to comprise a large number of my friends). All of the people who post status updates about their high finance lives (”Xxx is looking forward to building some equity at the Peterson meeting”) are not just counter-revolutionary. They’re boring.
However, the ultimate impact to that sort of “professional update” is really only mild annoyance, much like those friends who post “Xxx is doing homework.” Well, hey, good for you. But if you really were “doing homework” or “grading papers,” you wouldn’t be on Facebook. I’m just fully unclear on what people think interests others about their most mundane tasks. Going to a team building exercise or worried about third quarter earnings reports? Keep it to yourself.
But here’s the most depressing part: When the people that you respect appear to be mainly eating or buying new furniture for their homes, you realize that you have entered this awful part of middle age, where talking about tax returns or your yard at cocktail parties is what passes for conversation among those who don’t spend hours cooing about their babies and/or pets. And here’s the icing on the depressing cake: These are your “friends.” Facebook and social networking culture take people that you happen to have met somewhere sometime in your life and label them for you. Fell out of touch? Catch up on what you’ve missed. Didn’t know them that well to begin with? They’re just one click away! Look! They’re online now! Maybe you can hit them up real quick while they’re surveilling their other friends and ask them what it was like to grow up in whatever town they’re from.
Sure, there are exceptions. Sometimes someone posts a good link or a video, or even a funny status update. Someone might have some nice pictures of a trip they took or mention some interesting new music I haven’t heard. And I’m not even going to go into the lameness of declaring that you are a “fan” of something. Really? You’re a “fan” of running? Wow! You like Sriracha, the spicy red rooster sauce? Well, I’m sure the makers of that product will greatly appreciate your fandom. Maybe the company can have a special Webinar to talk about how many people are “fans” of its product or service. The people who like to become “fans” of things are also the same people who seem to think that joining a Facebook group about something equates to political activism about that cause. But like I said, that’s a post for another day.
So, my “friends,” take your Zombies and Pirates and Ninjas and Green Thumb Fake Anti-Global Warming Initiatives and Grateful Dead Bears and Hatching Eggs and mind-numbing empty “just for fun” diversions and go poke yourselves. Is anybody inventing anything? Is anybody building political power or making provocative art? Facebook is rotting our brains. It is not just a window into the lame and depressing lives of those who “know” you. It is part of the cancer.
No comments:
Post a Comment