To Live and Die in the Social Network

It's not the first thought I have in the morning, but it happens in the first five minutes of my day just about every day and pretty much without fail. I ask myself, "Why am I on FB?" I have answers for this question, but most of them aren't anything I'm particularly proud of. I started a FB account years ago because the girl I wanted to date was on FB and FB is/was more aesthetically appealing than myspace. Because of my age, I have a hard time understanding what the major difference is between FB and classic AOL from back in the day. I have a profile, people stay in touch with me through the service, and that's pretty much that. I have more than three hundred odd friends, but of those friends I really only keep up with a few of them. Facebook has allowed me to preserve more single serving friendships than I knew was possible. In the scope of this, I still don't feel that my political rantings and ravings have reached anyone, changed any mind, or touched any heart that wouldn't have already been influenced by what I have to say. I still haven't gotten a couch to sleep on that wasn't from a friend close enough for me to call and ask over the phone.

A month before she left me, my ex-fiancee took some time off from facebook after a party she threw had three people show up and she felt as though she didn't want to confuse and delude herself, she didn't have three hundred friends, she had three. When she quit, I felt compelled to do the same. "But my family connections," I say to myself, and I didn't. Facebook is the only place I connect with my family - who are scattered all across those estados unidos - but the phrase loses all it's power when you actually say it out loud or type it out and read it - because then it just sounds lazy and cheapens the very idea of "connecting with family" if not the concept of what "family" itself should mean.

Now, I'm in Spain and there's even more fuel on the fire. I don't have a super-smart-phone here and I pay for every call and every text I send. Many of my fellow students have been using Facebook as a tool for planning everything from a night out or a weekend of traveling in Europe. It's cheap and convenient, but ultimately, again, it is the kind of convenience that just seems lazy when I really sit down and think about it. But what of the alternatives, and in the situation where one is looking at alternatives, if they're an inadequate substitute (email chains, telephone chains, word of mouth) and the superior option is free and already being utilized by everyone (Facebook) does it make any sense to move away from Facebook? Doesn't seem like it does, but Facebook brings it's own laundry list of problems.

Facebook is like looking in the mirror, peering into an echo chamber or worse looking into people's windows (some of which may not even realize that they left that "window" open in their security settings). If you do any of those things too often you are acting outside the bounds of what is considered good social etiquette. If you spend too long staring at yourself in the mirror, you don't have any time for anyone else. If you just listen to what's being said in an echo chamber, you'd be warned that you're not getting all the information. And if you wander around and get caught peeping into other people's windows you're just about guaranteed a fine, a night in jail and a date with the court. Yet, this is what Facebook is.

This is the most well-documented age ever and most of what's being documented isn't even worth taking note of. How many pictures have to be taken before you reach a saturation point? When is it more like reruns or syndication than real life? When I think about Facebook in terms of being a waste of time, it seems oh so useless. But without Facebook, I wouldn't have any easy way to stay in touch with so many people, and without knocking them (because they span quite the range of amazing and not) I just wonder how useful it really is.

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