Facebook Hiatus

I don't know why this is a Google image result for
For "Facebook Hiatus"

Today marks the one month mark of my Facebook hiatus and, subsequently, the end of it. Now for those who've noticed that I was appearing on their friends list and in their chat list again, here are some of the answers to your frequently asked questions:

Q:Why did you give up Facebook in the first place?
A: Because it was a waste of time. More importantly however, it was socially crippling. I could spend all day "socializing" on Facebook without having had any real conversations that day. It was driving me crazy. I was sick of how easy Facebook made it to detach myself from my own social experience. Mind you, I don't think this was particular to me, I think that is the Facebook ailment generally, but I can't make everyone else delete their Facebook. Which brings me to my next question.

Q: Didn't you say you were giving up Facebook for good? What happened?
A: Yes, in the onset, I had intended not to come back to Facebook. So, thanks for pointing out my glaring failure. The simple truth in the matter is, while my Facebook hiatus was proving beneficial in achieving my initial goal, the cons began to outweigh the pros. Sure I wasn't socializing on Facebook anymore, but that didn't change the fact that other people still were. While 80% of everything said on Facebook could really go without ever being said, I was also missing out on the 20% that I really did want to hear, but wasn't. If you ever want to really notice how often people say something like "did you see [insert name of friend]'s announcement on Facebook?" Or, "did you see that video I posted on Facebook?" Then disable your Facebook, and you'll start hearing it all the time.


Q: Well, welcome back then. Did you have any words of wisdom from your short lived hiatus?
A: I do actually, funny you should ask. There is a lot about Facebook that really sucks. It can be a huge waste of time, and it provides a means for people you don't really care about to share the most intimate moments of their lives with you. That being said, it is also the way people have chosen to broadcast themselves. While much of what is done over Facebook could rightfully be done in a more intimate, socially healthy way; Facebook has also given us a new degree of socialization that we never had access to before. I think we could all stand to use Facebook a little less, but for what it does provide us in terms of new ways to interact with each other, well, who am I to argue against that? So as long as the people I care about (or at least whose  crazy lives I like to keep tabs on) continue to choose Facebook, I guess it doesn't hurt for me to choose it to.

Sic Infinit

In the beginning I said, "let there be a blog entry" and it didn't quite work out.

Little did I know these don't work that way. Not only do you have to make a blog, you have to be the one to populate it with content. Who ever knew the internet would be so hard?

The blog is called Semper in Excretā. Which is an excerpt from the Lord de Ramsey in 1998, more or less it means "always in excrement". Which I feel is a fitting title for any addition to the internet because, regardless of what you think of yourself, it's always important to remember who and what you're surrounded by, and in the internet's case, it's a pretty easy guess.

And speaking of the internet, my latest cause of frustration has been non other than our good ol' Facebook. It has in the last five years completely restructured socialization. Unfortunately these changes aren't (for the most part) for the good. There is an inherent danger in creating a website that allows you to recreate nearly every step of a social life online, and it is this:

Think back to when instant messaging first came around. You were so excited to talk to your friends that you would rush home so that you could sign on and be on all night, ready for whenever the familiar sound bites signaled the arrival of a "friend". Then when the great forerunner, Myspace, first emerged from the primordial ooze of social evolution. You would find yourself avoiding instant messenger, hoping it would give your friends a reason to comment on your page instead in hope of increasing that ever absorbing page view count.

We constantly avoid the most expedient means of communication in order to take advantage of the most tantalizing and distancing ones. Text messaging and instant messaging replace phone calls, "posts" replace instant messaging. Status updates replace posts. The further we distance ourselves from whom it is we are attempting to communicate with, the less we have to think about who it is we are communicating with.

Online evolution is reverse evolution, slowly reverting our spines back to a gelatinous state in which the thought of facing someone with whom we are "great friends" with online in person fills us with reticence.

The worst part about it is Facebook has reached a point where it is just too heavy a grain to bother going against. You could delete your Facebook, you could cancel your unlimited text messaging plan and switch over to actually calling and meeting people face to face. But few others would, leaving you high and dry in the social world.

Facebook is not inherently bad, there are many people who use it as an ancillary to socialization quite well. I'm not one of those, which I suppose makes this whole spiel a sort of reaction-formation defense. I always take the path of least resistance. If it's less confrontational to text than call, I'll text every time. What's that you say? It's gotten even more distant than texting? sign me up. Technology pulls us, particularly me, further and further away from one another while creating the illusion that we've never been closer. -What a load of excretia.