Cutting Off Your Nose To Spite Your Facebook
The Boyfriend has been grappling with Facebook. A couple of weeks ago he tried to quit it cold turkey and almost made it a week — a work-week — before he was back. He decided, instead, to shrink his social network (so far I've made the cut — whew!).
I know several people half my age who are suddenly exhibiting Luddite tendencies in the face of the social networking revolution. One of my board members, a kid who's set to be in charge of communications next year, told me over lunch the other day, "I don't do facebook — I mean, this—" he indicated me, us, our table — "is my facebook."
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Young people exhibiting anti-social-
networking tendencies —
what's new?
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Young people exhibiting anti-social-
networking tendencies —
what's new?
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Um, no, it's really not. This is just, uh, reality.
Reality is not a tool. It does not require batteries. It just is. It's just... reality. Which is really nothing at all like facebook, it's very true.
But there's the crux of the problem. These kids have grown up in a world that clearly values the virtual more highly than the actual. They assume, as is youth's wont, that we all have. But a big ol' chunk of my life was lived in the complete absence of a virtual reality (except for the one called, um, insanity). I've lived half my life without cellphones and "social networks" (which used to be called "circles of friends").
I mean, you can't blame the kids for feeling alienated by the very technology that connects them. "Networking" is itself a tech term — it's all links and nodes and patterns of connectivity. Just calling something "networking" essentially dehumanizes it. People my age still find it novel, of course, and get a kick out of saying it. It makes us feel cutting edge and cool.
Because we still inhabit (in that gauzy dream-lens of memory through which we view the present) a life before cells and social networks.
Life was harder then. That's what these kids don't get. I remember driving back to Southern Indiana from Arkansas in college in my sputtering VW Fastback, and having a breakdown around midnight about fifteen miles outside of Bloomington. Back in those pre-cell phone days, you had no choice but to get out and hitch your way to the nearest service station or to a truck-stop with a grimy, germ-ridden pay-phone (and this was also pre-Purell, which was introduced on the market in 1996).
(On the flipside, this was also the easiest way to get laid in Southern Indiana in the pre-Grindr era. It was a lot of work, but occasionally worth it.)
Ah, Youth!
Kids these days don't know how easy they've got it! Or maybe they do, and want it to be harder. But they don't know. I wish we had a time machine we could send some of them back to 1987 — not the Hollywood version of 1987. The real 1987.
Of course, youth is always steeped in unwarranted assumptions and misplaced great expectations. That's what youth is, and why we look back on it with such embarrassment and wistful longing. The kids currently set on rejecting facebook (not the cranks constantly caterwauling about privacy protections) are looking for something real to devote ten hours a day to, and they are right to suspect that facebook ain't it. (Back in 1987 it was cheap wine, marijuana and blowjobs in the front seat of a Malibu Classic in the Broad Ripple Park parking lot with The Smiths' "Strangeways Here We Come" in the tape deck.)
For us old coots facebook is kind of cool, because we don't expect it to be a bottle of cheap wine and a blowjob in the park.
I mean, you've got to look at it in context and understand how long it has taken — long, in internet terms, obviously — to come to a point where there's the tantalizing prospect of one-stop shopping for all the disparate elements — entertainment, information, interactivity — that define the web for the layman.
Facebook did not invent friendship and doesn't care how you define it. To appreciate its success (which it will squander in very short order, I assure you) you have to think back to when you had to visit youtube to see a youtube video and go to blogspot to read a blog.
Remember — not so long ago — the off-putting prevalence of those chain-spams you used to get from your aunt every morning because she was afraid God would smite her if she didn't forward them to everyone in her aol address book? Well, now she's got facebook, and you can just unfollow her. And she's none the wiser!
Seriously: if you're finding facebook oppressive, you're doing it wrong. I mean, I don't look at facebook as a real social network and so do not expect anything that I would expect from a real social network from the virtual social network of facebook.
Real social networks take a great deal of grooming, and we use them to build alliances, trade influence, get jobs, and make things happen in the world. They are based on consistency of character, establishing reputation, and the concept of reciprocal altruism. Their currency is mutual favors. In terms the facebook generation can understand: real social networks are basically Mafia Wars.
I mean, facebook is just not all that. In fact — ask you facebook "friends" something useful — ask 'em for help finding a job or moving house — and see what happens. Go ahead. I'll wait.
You back?
So whudja get?
Yeah, uh: a whole lotta nothin'. Peppered with annoying OMGs and ROFLMAOs. And a cat video or two.
Truth is, facebook is kind of a reverse social network. An anti-social-network, if you will. With prospective employers trolling for dirt on applicants, your so-called facebook friends are likely to do you more harm than good in the real world.
So the trick is not to assume or expect anything. I mean, facebook is great for folks you hardly know who might share your opinions on youtube cat videos. And it's actually a great way for a nonprofit to build a rapport with a volunteer or donor base. It's a great way for an organization to hook its members up with each other and build a sense of community, virtual though it may be, that can motivate them to go out and explore the real one, too.
I recently got a call from one of our members who wanted to donate ten grand. He said he was amazed at how much we'd been able to accomplish in such a short time, and it inspired him to give.
I was enormously grateful, of course (and humbled, as they say), but couldn't help asking myself: did we really accomplish all that much, or was it our constant contact with our base — largely through various media and social networking sites — that made them feel that the organization finally had some momentum? Whatever it was, it's translated into real giving.
That's social networking.
What these young Luddites are yearning for is obviously authenticity — a robust authenticity — in social relations. That's actually less a Luddite thing than a youth thing, I think.
I went through a very long period, twenty years of intense searching for just this sort of authenticity, and felt I occasionally found it in the sport of spontaneous sexual experience — in an alley outside a fin de siècle bathhouse in Budapest at 2 a.m. with my pants around my ankles grappling and grunting with a randy Hungarian in a similar predicament. For example.
But the truth is, everything surrounding the Thing Itself — the moment of orgasm — is theater. Well, at least for men — remember: men can't fake orgasm.
Although — if I can digress a moment — I recall one irritating rutting session with The Ex where he actually said, "I think I came."
"You think you came?" I said incredulously.
"Yeah, I think so" — *Blink, blink* — came the clueless reply.
"How — what — who has ever — ?" I stammered. "How can you not know? You've been coming five times a day—" (chronic masturbator) — "for thirty years! Did you come or didn't you?"
I never got a straight answer, but, guys, the proof is, uh, in the pudding.
And maybe that's the problem with facebook: no pudding. Swapping cute cat videos is good as far as it goes, but out in the real world it's not who you know, it's who you blow.
All I'd say to the anti-social networking crowd is, lookit, you can choose your friends (and unchoose them, too) — but it's a lot easier on facebook than in real life. OK, occasionally the unfriended will hunt you down and torch your house, but, trust me, in real life you hardly ever get off that easy.
So relax. Enjoy. Maybe have a bottle of wine and share a cat video or two. "Like" something. LOL — Heck, ROFLMFAO — while your at it. Maybe someone'll give you a color-changing flasher pig on Farmville. That's what facebook friends are for.
Well written as always, and nice Jamiroquai reference. ;-)
The money quote, as it were, for me?
"Facebook did not invent friendship and doesn't care how you define it."
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I've grappled with the idea of unplugging from Facebook myself. I've got way too much up there for my own good (links, pics, etc), but thankfully I was a quasi-adult when I found FB. I knew better. I've been around on the internet long enough to know how to filter what I post/share.
I will say, though, I have actually made two major moves in my life thanks to Facebook. One was my move out of Boston to Portland, ME - via a FB post a friend put up about needing a roommate, and one to Denver, where I put up the "anyone need a roommate for October?" post and got a reply. Both of these things could have occurred via the telephone, or even on a postcard, but I would have had to scatter my questions far and wide in order to achieve any results. FB was immediate, or nearly.
What I have seen, and this goes for not only FB, but the other ways guys are now connecting via the net (apps on the phone, specifically), is that we'd sooner cruise a fella with a profile on our phone than actually work up the courage to say hi, drop a line, and maybe even an invite out for coffee/beer/etc. Speaking and flirting in real life has become a dying art form, sadly. I'm not innocent here, by no means, but it's fair to say I've been making the leap from LOL'ing at whatever a guy says and swapping pics to actually planning a physical, in-real-life date, with some modicum of success. It takes a bit of bravery, and knowing how to be safe (meeting in public spaces, etc), but it can still be done.
I do wonder about the state of dating for kids who know nothing but the FBs, Tumblr, Twitter, etc side of life. Working where I do (the Orchard, selling plenty of shiny metal boxes), I see this transition and movement to the virtual and away from reality nearly every day. It can be kind of frightening.
I do enjoy watching the looks on my coworker's faces when I connect with a cute customer and, if I play my cards right, score a date or at least a phone number. The youngins I work with can't believe actual conversation works sometimes.
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So, the first sentence is why your posts have been slower in coming? Regardless this one was on the dash about FB. But, if you can possibly imagine it, I used to meet dates through "The Phoenix"...and I had to write a letter, wait for the phone to ring (yeah, me and Vicki Carr), and hope for a get-together. Whether I got lucky, or just got coffee, there were three hurdles to clear: writing, talking, and meeting. Of course, a quicker route could be had at great clubs like 15 Lansdowne St. or Sporter's, though one still had to know how to dance at the former and talk about the Bruins, the Sox, or (a couple of times) The Head of the Charles at the latter. All the social media "seems" quicker and easier, but, after the pix trading and the camming, you still gotta take the chance and "hook-up" face-to-face.
A Happy Christmas to you and a Merry New Year, too!
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