I have had a Facebook account since spring of 2005. I was a sophomore in college. At that time Facebook was only limited to some colleges--pretty much only big state schools and some private schools. When I got Facebook you could upload a profile picture, write a profile description and write on friends’ walls. I think you could send private messages but only to one person at a time.
Fast forward 4 years. Now Facebook is open to anyone with a valid email address. It has far surpassed 100 million users around the world. Not only can you upload thousands of photos but you can tag identifications of your friends. So people who look at your photos can put a face to a name of people they don’t even know! Not only that but you can write private messages to 20 people at a time and you could write back and forth for as long as you like. I haven’t tested that out. There may be a limit to how long a thread of messages can go but I know I’ve had threads go for hundreds of messages at a time. In addition to all these snapshots of life and group conversations you can now post video messages to friends. So now people you don’t know not only know what you look like from photos, they can also identify the sound of your voice and expressions. As if you’re a personal friend or a celebrity they’ve watched on TV.
And society as a whole acts like this is all normal. The word “stalking” no longer elicits fear and nervousness. Now it’s a tongue-in-cheek way to say you’re intrigued by someone you either know (or don’t) and you like to read what they write, see who they talk to, find out what their interests are and peek into their lives to either judge or be impressed. I have found myself clicking through photos of friends’ (I use that term loosely) home renovations, Christmas mornings, positive pregnancy tests, and intimate marriage proposals. And of course some of these people I’m close to and have a vested interest in. But of course, those are the people who in a Facebook-less world would take the time to email me photos of the events. The photos I view on Facebook are rarely of close friends. More often they are of “friends” who I haven’t had a face-to-face conversation with in 3 years or more or they are friends who I’ve met recently and have had little more than a passing conversation with.
We have become a society obsessed with being our own celebrity.
Facebook gives us each an opportunity to be the star of our own reality show. Our profile photo gives out a message: I AM FUN! I AM SEXY! I AM ARTSY! I AM DEEP! I HAVE BIG MUSCLES NOW!
Our “Write Something About Yourself” box gives us an opportunity to show the world how introspective we are. Or spiritual. Or hilaaaarious.
And our photo albums give us the opportunity to show people how exciting our lives are! Or how well off we are. Or how gorgeous the people are who we've chosen to surround us. Or just how gorgeous we are. (Take that jerky guys of high schools past!)
And seriously, I’m only touching on the surface of the ignored weirdness of Facebook. A second level is how strange it is to have a “profile page.” One page of information and images that represents you to the world that knows you. I have roughly 1200 “friends” on Facebook. Let’s be honest, there’s no way I personally know many more people than that in the real world. And of those 1200 probably 20% are people who I have even run into in person within the last year. All the rest only know the adult me (post childhood, post college) through what they see on Facebook. They see I’m single. They see I’ve lived in various places. They see photos of me on stage. Photos at the White House. Photos at Disney World. Photos at bars in New York.
Insert judgmental presumption here.
How utterly strange is it to have 1 representation of who you are to your extended family, long lost childhood friends, first loves, middle school bullies, college sorority sisters, and people you’ve just met through friends within the last 2 weeks!
I submit that we should all do a little self-analysis on our Facebook use. Maybe we should scale back our mindless curious clicking and our diarrhea-like output of personal information. Perhaps we’d be better served to close the laptop and pick up the phone. Have a real conversation with someone who has legitimately invested in your life. Not people who just click on pictures of it.
3 comments:
Amen. You are right on Hil. A few weeks ago we went through a deleted a whole bunch of people that we're friends with on Facebook. I told A if neither of us recognize their name or profile picture at first glance, then we probably shouldn't be sharing our photos with them.
Way good post Hil! I think we spoke briefly about this this past weekend. It is pretty scary how people glance at your profile and think they know who you are. "Hey, aren't you on Broadway now?"
I think people (mainly women) have a really difficult time not comparing themselves to others' lifestyles and always wanted something different/more b/c of the pretty face people put on for facebook. Pretty sad.
However, facebook has been extremely helpful to some people (i.e. the recluse or socially shy) as a conduit into real socialization as we had mentioned. However, we can also create a facebook facade and no one every truly know who we are but at the same time have many "friends."
Oh the importance of face time!! Glad we got some of that this past weekend friend!
This is really an insightful post, Hilary. I was particularly struck by the line on being obsessed with our own celebrity; a kind of unnamed self-idolatry. Facebook, in a sense, the altar upon which we place the "graven images" that we ourselves fabricate.
Thanks!
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