WHY WHY YOU ASK WHY
facebook makes my life hurt
1. i do not want our generation to reach 40 and to be asking each other to coffee over facebook.
2. i do not want the first social interactions of my children to be over facebook.
3. it creeps me out that nothing fun exists until it is documented and posted to the internet.
4. it also creeps me out that people can piece together a pretty accurate picture of my life because of our overenthusiastic facebook usage.
5. what creeps me out the most is that i can do the same to everyone else. not that i really have anything to hide, nor does anyone else, but i think facebook has made us forget about privacy for its own sake. i mean we care about our privacy to some degree but exhibitionist tendencies override impulses towards discretion.
6. facebook is a giant vanity project. it is really embarrassing and also unchristian for me to want to appear cool over facebook by enumerating my favorite bands and movies and still pretending not to care. aah! it is so terrifying! i mean, it is bad that people will broadcast pictures of me to the universe, but it is also bad that i periodically check that roundup of images for ugly ones to delete! i honestly believe that facebook is a sin. that is what i feel and not what i decided, please be quiet artemis!
7. it is terrible how much information there is in my head that should not be there! i am so upset. it is so bad that i know so many things about strangers! wtf is wrong with the world!
8. please everyone i am friends with, delete your facebook!
9. also, let's all place bets on how long this will last while i am in college. i just had this life crisis in which i imagined my children communicating with me over facebook and i knew it had to go!
16 comments:
All good points. I do indeed know much much much more about people than I did before Facebook. But it has also helped me make good friends...which is really pathetic. Ah now I feel like a bad person.
But mine is not going anytime soon. I guess I am not as strong as you. Oops. I was thinking just now that I can't get rid of it while I am still at Andover, because I would feel so out of the loop...and then I thought maybe between high school and college, but then I would never effectively keep up with people. That totally proves your point, and it is bad...but oh well.
I concur. Adios!
the worst thing about facebook is how easy it is to reactivate
murphy i am not trying to guilt you into anything! you are definitely the best/only person i could become friends with over facebook and i completely understand why you would keep it. i am tempted as well! not nearly as much as i thought, at all at all. it is different, i am starting a new life, moving to a different country, rollin with a new crowd... i will write letters to you at andover and that would be an effective way of keeping up with someone. it's what we've done (we literate humans) until about 8 years ago! crazy!
Oh I know you aren't trying to guilt trip me. I am doing it to myself now, though.
It is so funny how we have become quite great friends over Facebook. I will definitely love getting/writing letters...but not everyone would correspond with me that way...and I feel like getting rid of Facebook would be getting rid of 80% of the people in my life.
I think I have become so attached to Facebook lately because I am at home and don't have homework and life to keep me busy.
good show! you are a stronger individual than i. i will write you letters (c: oh and i come home in october for a few days so make room for me on your floor (i don't care that i live less than a mile away)
Paz, what great points you make!
I feel very tempted to delete my facebook. But I have already made most of my page very private and limited. Plus, in my particular instance, I would be cutting off fast and easy correspondance with many friends and acquaintances. I feel so silly explaining myself. Hahaha.
Anyways, you have stronger will than I do. So, props.
I wish people would write letters more often.
fast and easy is the problem! more to come on this sujet. also, it is funny cause i thought yf was yF! (yo Fuck!) aka mike lee murphy. AAH im missing flight of the conchords!
ahh yes...its my laziness that gets to me. Fast and easy communication for meaningless benign chitchat = goodness in my mind.
HAHAHA! Flight of the conchords! I haven't seen the last two episodes. I'm in withdrawal.
paz,
this is stupid. you don't actually talk to anyone you interact with daily over facebook, aside from brief references to actual goings-on. and while i think facebook can become a giant vanity project, i've always felt it a more voyeuristic than exhibitionist exercise. i suppose that reveals something about my personality)... i guess if you're terribly conscious of your own image you could end up thinking of yourself as a sort of mini-celebrity but you never struck me as especially concerned with documenting life electronically so that others can measure and validate the amount of fun you're having. i can sort of see why you would want to delete your facebook for the months before and after college starts, so that people meet you first and judge you later. but the idea of giving your children instructions and advice over facebook is a paranoid delusion. in any case the tendency towards electronic communication which does exist is irreversible and you resist it only at the risk of making yourself irrelevant. the argument you present, while well thought-out, just puts a rational face on an impulse towards apolitical conservativism. in any case i love you but i am not going to write you letters. that has nothing to do with my principles and is entirely a consequence of my own laziness. your decision forces people outside of your immediate social circle to go to disproportionate lengths to contact you. it's ultimately limiting and to a degree self-indulgent.
love,
dominick
wow. i was really high last night. sorry.
wesleyan's fun come visit.
Dom, have you met Eleni Healey yet? Ellie, have you met Dominick DeJoy yet?
1. i am not high.
2. "this is stupid."
are you actually telling me that deleting my profile from an ONLINE NETWORKING WEBSITE is stupid? reconsider, amigo!
3. "you don't actually talk to anyone you interact with daily over facebook, aside from brief references to actual goings-on."
au contraire. girls are different, look at their wall to walls.
4. "and while i think facebook can become a giant vanity project, i've always felt it a more voyeuristic than exhibitionist exercise." i completely agree! i made that point. the point being, i don't like being a voyeur and i think it is badbadbad that the value of privacy in the modern world has gone the way of subprime mortgages! (hell). bonjour, monsieur le patriot act!
5. "but the idea of giving your children instructions and advice over facebook is a paranoid delusion." are you sure? when are we going to delete our facebooks? it is a slippery slope! the etiquette has not been codified.
6. "in any case the tendency towards electronic communication which does exist is irreversible and you resist it only at the risk of making yourself irrelevant."
uh, i have a blog and a myspace. i'm not exactly on the path to amish land. i just wanted MOST of my social interactions to occur in person, undocumented, etc etc. i want my life and my "online life" to be completely separate. "the internets" is allowed to complement and supplement, but not supplant or encroach upon my "real life." facebook has put this careful balance in danger!
7. "rational face on an impulse towards apolitical conservativism." i don't know what this means. if nothing else, please explain this part.
"it's ultimately limiting and to a degree self-indulgent." at least in my case, i believe that having a facebook is more self indulgent than not having one. ii mean come on. look at us. i'm not going to name names, but i don't want to end up one of those girls who takes pictures of herself etc etc and changes her profile picture every day. that is my worst nightmare. also, do you really want to look back in 5 or 6 or 10 years and see your life in pictures easily accessible on the internet??? nnooooooo!
i looooove you so much you don't even KNOW i may visit you the saturday after next.
I agree facebook taken to an absurd degree (as seems to be the case esp in north america) is the devil. What you said - arranging to meet friends on their walls, spending hours looking at people's photos, posting every single picture taken and talking about doing so while still taking it, also it manipulating you into wanting to appear cool as well as immediately judging other people - all true. But I'll argue there are some good points about it: it's a practically unrivalled resource for connecting with people, it's the most global of social networking sites and the easiest to find people because, unlike on myspace, they usually have their name/school/location. So you can get in touch with people whose info you never took, or lost, or they changed their teenage years emails, etc. Also, it makes it easy to stay in contact with people who are not good at it, as in won't write letters or emails. That makes it possible to maintain even distant friendships, and many of them, too. You don't have to invest so much into keeping in some sort of contact with many people - and that's bad when your actual good friendships degenerate into a wall-to-wall exchange, but you're not going to be best friends with many people, while it's still important? good? useful? to have loose friends/acquaintances.
On a different note - let me know if you pass through London, or just come visit me! My email is marta_ow@hotmail.com
yeah i've met eleni she lives in my dorm we talked about you (which is kind of creepy since i've met you once) she's cool.
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