Making the Case for Facebook
If I were a poet (by trade, that is) I would write an ode to the facebook profile. The internet was a marvelous invention in itself, but social networking has changed the world. Some have argued that it is destroying interpersonal relationships, but I beg to differ. The same accusations were probably thrown at telephones upon their invention, at television, and even books. What facebook has created is a wonderworld, where I can control who I am, how people will see me—I have the power.
I have 566 friends on facebook. In real life, I’ve probably never had more than about six at any given time. I don’t know if other people do, but I doubt it. Anyway, that leaves 560 people who only see me on the internet. And why should that be a negative thing? These 560 people know only a few controlled factoids about me: I like Yeats and Tommy Boy, Seinfeld and The Wire; I draw cartoons, I listen to jazz, and I don’t mind putting an absurd joke on my profile (i. e., “Interests: the preparations of cured meats). My pictures make it look like I’m never home, I’m always smiling with friends, I’m living the life you dream of, having a beer and cracking a joke. And this is what people know of me.
Real-life socializing is wrought with anxieties and constant surprises. It’s unpredictable—what will a friend say next? What will I say? How will they feel? What will this amount to years from now? And there’s no time to contemplate in the real world. Before updating my facebook status, I can look through Woody Allen’s short sketches for the New Yorker, or Yeats or Elliot to find that perfect something that represents me, as I would like to be represented. Not as I am, but as I would like to be seen.
In real life, I have no idea what people are thinking of me, what I look like. There is a barrier between people, between consciousnesses, that can never be broken down, no matter how close to another human being you become. You’ll never know, my closest friend, my secret contempt for your stupid looking face, your annoying laugh, or any such thing, and I won’t know yours. So we pretend that we know what’s going on, and live with secret perpetual regret and contemplation over our every action, never having the slightest clue as to whether or not we’re getting closer to some elusive answer, or if we’re perceived even relatively close to what we’d like to be perceived as. Chances are, people think you’re an asshole.
But this is all transcended, traversed, circumvented, on the glorious internet. A persona that I can control, that I can modify to my liking, this is the gift the internet has given me. And as far as the six of you who know me in real life go—don’t let the word out to my 560 admirers.
7 months ago