In Your Facebook
I had to disable my Facebook account; it was making me too anxious.
Deciding whether to confirm or deny friend requests, wondering why the requests I’d sent hadn’t been answered, fretting if my profile picture was sufficiently edgy while still being appropriate enough should—by some strange set of circumstances—my daughter happen upon my home page: it was all too stressful, especially since everyone else’s updates were way more interesting than my own.
I’ll stick to blogging, where I maintain some tiny semblance of control over what appears on my own computer screen.
It was kind of cool hearing from folks I hadn’t been in contact with for a while, and a reasonably enjoyable time-suck poking around looking for pages of others I’d lost touch with, but eventually, it wore thin; I found myself alternately using Facebook as a stick to beat myself with—all those interesting updates from “friends” make me, by comparison, a total loser—and as a petard by which to hoist others—clearly, anybody posting interesting updates makes them a loser for spending time on Facebook doing so.
Ultimately, this may be one of those generational things: while I’ve never been averse to clogging up the internet tubes with narcissistic navel-gazing and self-involved ranting and raving about concerns of concern only to me, my appetite for revealing everything about myself to hordes of anonymous strangers and even to people whose faces I know but whose names I can never remember has its limit: I guess I don’t mind posting some 327 word reflection about how I got drunk and rode my bike around in circles, but to have to download, then upload the pictures, and write witty little descriptions of them is beyond where I draw the line.
In any case, I’m glad Facebook is out there, but I’m also glad it’s not my current obsession; call me when the fad is over and you’ve got time to be friends for real.
Deciding whether to confirm or deny friend requests, wondering why the requests I’d sent hadn’t been answered, fretting if my profile picture was sufficiently edgy while still being appropriate enough should—by some strange set of circumstances—my daughter happen upon my home page: it was all too stressful, especially since everyone else’s updates were way more interesting than my own.
I’ll stick to blogging, where I maintain some tiny semblance of control over what appears on my own computer screen.
It was kind of cool hearing from folks I hadn’t been in contact with for a while, and a reasonably enjoyable time-suck poking around looking for pages of others I’d lost touch with, but eventually, it wore thin; I found myself alternately using Facebook as a stick to beat myself with—all those interesting updates from “friends” make me, by comparison, a total loser—and as a petard by which to hoist others—clearly, anybody posting interesting updates makes them a loser for spending time on Facebook doing so.
Ultimately, this may be one of those generational things: while I’ve never been averse to clogging up the internet tubes with narcissistic navel-gazing and self-involved ranting and raving about concerns of concern only to me, my appetite for revealing everything about myself to hordes of anonymous strangers and even to people whose faces I know but whose names I can never remember has its limit: I guess I don’t mind posting some 327 word reflection about how I got drunk and rode my bike around in circles, but to have to download, then upload the pictures, and write witty little descriptions of them is beyond where I draw the line.
In any case, I’m glad Facebook is out there, but I’m also glad it’s not my current obsession; call me when the fad is over and you’ve got time to be friends for real.
posted by Professor Dave at 12:55 PM
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