My social network

For my 200th published post (thank you, thank you), I dug up a draft from six months ago.  Like anything dug up from the past, it's covered in dirt and crawling insects and has a repugnant smell.  Hope you enjoy it!

I think this post is best viewed through...
ThE wAyBaCk MaChInE

While watching The Social Network on March 20thish, my wife made a comment (even before the movie started) that I would probably want to blog about it after it was all over. She asked me towards the end of the movie if I was feeling anything, and frankly at that point, I wasn't. Who knows who, huh?  Yeah, that's right.  This guy.

It wasn't until the next morning when the wheels really started turning and a blog started brewing. Dang it!  My wife knows me a little too well, I think.  Little did she know that I wouldn't touch the blog again for another six months. Look who is laughing now, wife!  Yeah that's right.  This guy. 

No, not that guy.  This guy.

I won't go too much into the movie itself (I do recommend that it be seen (especially if you have Facebook) because it is a really good movie with some decent acting and a brilliant film score that was made by the guy who wanted to make passionate animal sex to me in high school). No, I just want to talk about the idea of social networking via Facebook and similar programs.  But I'll only be talking about Facebook, because that's the only social networking site I belong to.

Yes Virginia, I use Facebook. I check it several times a day, actually. I don't get on it for long periods of time anymore- mostly because I don't technically have my own computer (although for all intents and purposes, my smart phone is a cute little baby computer) and because I don't play any Facebook games anymore (yes, I was able to be freed from Madden NFL Superstars and Farm Town).  I still check it frequently.  Often aimlessly, with no real reason to check other than the habitual compulsion.  I don't know if that makes me a slave to it- I think it's more indentured curiosity.

I think that there are some tremendous advantages to having Facebook. Probably the biggest reason is the photo feature. Having two young children, we tend to take a decent amount of pictures. Kids do cute things, after all, and you want to capture these moments so they can be relived/used to embarrass at later dates. During the days when you actually had to take your film to the store and have paid professionals process it, it could get a little bit costly if you wanted to let everybody know what your kid looked like wearing a Darth Vader mask.  With Facebook, I can disseminate large numbers of pictures to family members very quickly.  It also helps us keep our photo albums organized- which is akin to having a constantly recurring miracle for us.  The best part- the only cost is a little time.

Ah, time.  Time is the essence of why Facebook is so popular.  Nowadays, time is much more commodity than luxury. So often, we don't have the time to keep up with everyone we'd like to keep up with- especially since we've gotten away from our hunter/gatherer roots.  I imagine it was much easier for our ancestors to keep in touch, since they lived at/close to home for their whole lives, and tended to move as entire group units.  Today, if you stay at home with your parents until you're, I don't know, random age of the top of my head 25, you are ostracized and branded a loser.  There is huge unspoken social pressure to leave the nest.  And sometimes, spoken pressure.  Very plainly spoken, loud-at-7:00-in-the-morning-get-off-your-lazy-butt-and-get-a-job-pressure.  Not that I know anything about that type of pressure....  Some people would say that being independent and spreading your proverbial wings is what being American is all about.  Personally, I blame The Oregon Trail for our vagabondic tendencies.

I also blame this game for my fascination with killer diarrhea

I find Facebook is very useful for keeping up with relationships that I value but don't have enough time to effectively keep in touch with. It helps me to find people from my past and see how they are doing- people that I might not to have a deep relationship with, but still would like to be able to catch up with from time to time and see how they're doing.  I can drop someone a line and let them know I miss them (therefore putting the ball in their court to keep communication alive).  Shallow?  Superficial?  Probably.  But isn't that better than just having people come into your lives for short seasons and then slip away like greased pigs on Teflon?

I've also seen Facebook used as a living memorial.  A young woman I was in the social work program with died last December.  Once a month or so, I'll visit her page, look at pictures, and think about our short time together.  People will post things on her wall, and I feel like it strengthens the bonds of fellowship to be able to read the sentiments that other people write, knowing how much of an impact she made in the lives of so many people.  I know there are people out there like me that struggle to express their feelings verbally, but can't get them to shut off once they're placed at a keyboard.
Unfortunately, Facebook is not the end all/be all of existence.  I realize that for many (like me), Facebook can be a relationship crutch.  Relationships are built on compromise and vulnerability- two areas that involve giving up control, which can be very uncomfortable.  It is pretty easy to control the level of relationships when you don't have to speak to someone face to face.  If I find that I'm losing that control in anyway, I can just delete you out of my life.  No reason, and chances are you won't even notice until you go to your farm and find out that I moved out of the neighborhood- permanently.  That isn't how relationships were meant to be, I'm guessing.  But because of social networking, that's where they are moving to (if they aren't already there now).
In many ways, Facebook provides a sort of a commentary about our society.  I know, I know- wow, so brilliant.  Maybe I should tell that to the world- ON FACEBOOK.  Actually, that's not a bad idea.  I'll be right back.......Okay, where was I?  Oh, right.  Commentary.

In our capitalistic, materialistic, fast paced society, Facebook enables us to keep real relationship development on the back burner.  Essentially, it takes a fundamental component of humanity (need for contact with other human beings) and weds it with our innate sense of self-importance.  The result is that Facebook and its social networking friends have made us each into virtual commodities.  It's just another avenue for the 'best face forward' mindset that plagues our culture.  We don't strive to become a person to get to know better, but a better brand.  We don't have personality, we have marketability.  We fill out information boxes to make ourselves more appealing (note- some people don't, which is why those people and me aren't friends), pick our own labels, and then off we go! 

We aren't accountable to each other in cyberspace.  We don't have to look at ourselves in the mirror.  We don't have to be vulnerable.  We don't have to ask or be asked the hard questions.  When the going gets tough?  The tough simply remove the post.  Or delete the friend.  There's no need to grow- we can surround ourselves with whoever we want.  And darn it, those pesky liberals/atheists/gays (or whatever the stereotypical foils to your belief system are) keep posting crap about their beliefs, and it's clogging my news feed, so I'm just going to stay here in this safe zone, where all my friends believe the same thing I do, and we all just build each other up until we look like the body builder from Lady in the Water.

SPOILER ALERT
In the ending, Mark Zuckerberg is rolling in the dough- but to achieve his success, he loses his closest friend.  I thought it was brilliant and delicious irony.  He has all of these Facebook "friends"- at the cost of his one true friend who had stuck by him through thick and thin.  Is that what we're coming to?  Lives that revolve around keeping ourselves trendy at the expense of what makes us uniquely us?  I don't think Facebook has taken me there yet- but it's definitely one of the off-ramps on this freeway of life I'm traveling.  Facebook enables us to have scores of friends- more friends than we've maybe ever had in our entire lives.  But are they friendships that mean anything?  Relationships of the meaningful type take more effort than Facebook typically requires.

In the end, I think that Facebook (and other social networking sites) can be great tools to augment our relationship development.  There are very practical reasons to have Facebook.  But don't let it consume your social livelihood.  Because then you will end up as a mid-twenties solitary billionaire.  Or something like that.

Pictures-
That guy- https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigEeeUnoJAajm4Ug_ODuAJQeWQUuXJbqpLxUKLTMDqB2eDuJS3wXWFs7EqlqMRqtmiPKUBJo_8tVTGIpCLR8heU_gMYLHQH_UNPI6uqRZXdldOwyieYp8kiCgNTprmmxmDBbxlgkgSzBI/s320/that+guy.jpg
Oregon trail- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_%28video_game%29
Reggie- http://www.laprensatoledo.com/Stories/2006/July12,2006/Lady_in_the_Water__Freddy_Rodriguez.jpg