*This is an old essay I wrote in college, circa like 2010 or 2009!*
Unless you’ve been living inside a rock, on the coast of bohemia or in China for the past five years, you know what Facebook is. Technically, it’s a social network, like MySpace, but marginally less creepy. Or at least it was. Now it’s virtually a cyber window into someone’s life, the ultimate voyeur’s perch. Not only can you see everything about someone, you can see everyone they know and everything they do. And then you can see everything about everyone they know and everything that they do. Facebook has changed the way we socialize almost as much as the Internet changed the way we process information.
I first heard of Facebook from my boyfriend when I was a sophomore in high school. He was a senior and said it was for college kids. I didn’t care, I was too busy getting detention to pay attention to some random thing my boyfriend said. It wasn’t until my senior year that it became big. I was too cool and couldn’t be bothered with Facebook all year; it was just another thing I didn’t want to deal with or have to check, like email. But my boyfriend at the time was insistent and by the time I got my Wash U email and could join the network, I did. Now, Facebook was never quite the drug for me it seemed to be for everyone else. When I came to college suddenly EVERYONE was on Facebook and talking about it and looking at it and posting pictures and writing on walls so much that they probably did it in their dreams. This was a time when some people still didn’t have Facebook and everyone was new.
I would say the biggest thing about Facebook is your profile picture. It’s the picture that follows you around. Everywhere you go on Facebook, everywhere you write, comment, post, there’s your picture. Every time someone goes to your profile or looks you up, the first thing they look at is your profile picture. Now, there are many different kinds of profile pictures. There’s the full-body, waist cut-off, and the only-face picture usually reserved for the more rotund. There’s the goofy, I’m jumping, on-the-ground, falling, or laughing picture. There’s the artsy pictures with nice compositions, nice lighting and there are usually sunglasses involved. There’s the this-is-not-me profile picture of a flower or a THC molecule. There’s the I’m-so-hot profile picture that’s subdivided into I’m-so-hot-in-a-costume, I’m-so-hot-in-a-bathing-suit, I’m-so-hot-with-my-hot-friends, and the I’m-so-hot-with-my-hot-partner.
And that brings us to Facebook relationships. For those of you that somehow don’t know, two people can be in a relationship on Facebook. It shows on their profile that they are in a relationship with someone. And then you can click on that bitch that got the man you want and look at how fat her earlobes are. Now, when two people agree to be in a relationship on Facebook, the fact is that as soon as the lovebirds click “Accept Relationship Request” the statement “Loveduck A and Lovequial B are now in a relationship.” appears on the newsfeeds of everyone they both know. It’s sort of like being famous, but not. At all.
The real idea here is that being in a relationship on Facebook is kind of a big deal. As soon as it happens everyone the both of you know knows that you two are doing the freak nasty. It’s a bit ridiculous. And because of this, the dynamic of real-life, in the flesh relationships have a certain pressure/weirdness about them. Someone will inevitably want to “be official” on Facebook and maybe someone else doesn’t want the whole world (or maybe that one hoop-dream, hot so-and-so) to know that they’ve settled down. Maybe someone doesn’t feel validated in their relationship until the cyber circus sees it but someone else doesn’t want their fraternity bros to make fun of them for being too committed to that chick that’s only a six. Maybe there’s a fight and maybe they break up, but it’s okay; because they were never “official” on Facebook, where breaking up is an even bigger deal than getting together. The only thing worse than “Loveturkey A and Lovedove B are in a relationship” is “Loveflamingo A and Lovepigeon B are no longer in a relationship”. It’s sad, it’s public and it’s accompanied by a miserable broken-heart icon.
Alright, so let’s talk about exactly who sees this earth-shattering break-up on their newsfeeds: schoolmates, classmates, roommates, dorm-mates, ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, campers, co-workers, randoms, everyone, sisters, you’ve, brothers, ever, cousins, known, and, potentially, parents. Now, Facebook was not always so. It has gone through many mutations, somewhere around four, that have generally made it creepier. It has also filtered into the consciousness of the larger populous. I am not proud to say it, but my parents are on Facebook. I blocked my mom years ago and made the mistake of accepting my marginally-more-relaxed and severely-less-responsible dad’s friend request. He can now see all the pictures where I’m wasted/high/making-out/scantily-clad or drinking. It’s great. Not. It’s terrible and it shouldn’t be that way. I have friends who have to severely limit their “Facebook personality” because they are friends with their bosses, younger cousins, teachers or confessors. It’s horrible. Facebook really is not the appropriate conduit of interaction between all relationships. Unfortunately, it’s a balance many a college kid, with parents on Facebook, must strike.
My dad doesn’t have many friends on Facebook so he’s always on mine, commenting and “liking” away. I don’t use my Facebook too much but when I do he’s sure to notice. I use Facebook mostly as a means of communication. I send lots of messages and write on a few walls. I’m really into status updates. It’s a fairly recent thing with Facebook. One can, if one wishes to, simply write a short “update” that will rest beside one’s name at the top of one’s profile. This “status update” will then be relayed to hundreds of news feeds (provided one has hundred of friends) instantly for the masses to enjoy. I like the idea so I often like to put clever things and interesting song lyrics as my status. A few favorites: Macy Moore is a Jedi. The matrix has you. Macy Moore can hear you. Live long and prosper. Macy Moore is bad at vodka and good at dreams. You know, really catchy stuff.
I have 560 friends on Facebook and by the time they block me, other people update their statuses or scratch their asses, and these “friends” get on Facebook, a decent few should read my pithy words. Now, 560 is a decent, respectable amount of Facebook friends, particularly because I don’t do a lot of friending- or asking other Facebookers to be my friend and let me virtually view them. Some people have close to 2,000 friends, which is ridiculous. Those people don’t know many of the people they are “friends” with. I don’t know a few of the people I’m friends with. They either asked me and didn’t look to sketchy, or I asked them after seeing that they knew someone I know and were interesting/attractive. A lot of people want to look like they know a lot of people and just friend everyone, or are just really into voyeurism, or they may really know 2,000 people. Same things, really.
This brings up how active people are on Facebook. And that brings up how people use Facebook. Some people have it on their phone, which I think is ridiculous, but a lot of people have it. Some people have emails sent to them every time some guy they met once, on spring break, three years ago, comments on someone’s left nostril he met twice, at Lalapalooza, eight months ago. Some people look at Facebook a hundred times a day, twenty, ten, five times a day, or only once a day. I have Facebook on a computer, get one email when someone tags me in a picture (for damage-control purposes), and check Facebook maybe five times a week. When I do check it, I usually just see if anyone’s bothered me and needs me to do something/wants to hang out. I look at parties, events, messages. I check out my newsfeed and laugh at people. That’s about it. My Facebook has activity, people talk to me, I talk to people but it’s not my life. I like to talk to people face to face. If I really want to talk to you I’ll call you, when I get a phone. If I want to hang out, we hang out and if you want to hang out, we hang out.
Now, because my Facebook isn’t always uploading pictures and getting wall-posts some people might think I’m some kind of loser. Some people who have as little activity on Facebook as I do maybe are losers. Or maybe they are too cool and life a full life to have much time to live out some cyber-life on a computer. I’m probably a bit of both. The thing about Facebook is that you get out of it what you put into it. If you make it important to you and are always on it, then the people you interact with on Facebook will generally get back to you. You could be the coolest person in the world and if you never get back to anyone on Facebook, your Facebook will turn into a ghost town. Upload a few pictures every now and then, make a few friends, and comment on tons of stuff and you’re a regular Facebooker You can have an active, virtual social life. This has a marginal correlation with your real-life social life. You could be really social on Facebook and not-so-social in real life, or not-so-social on Facebook and really social in real life. Or you could just not have a Facebook, but that’s generally reserved for only the snootiest, too-cool-for-schoolers or the seriously computer incompetent.
But the cold, hard truth about Facebook is that it’s voyeurism, plain and simple. Anytime of day, anywhere, anyone who is friends with me can see where I live or go to school, how old I am, my political views, my relationships, my favorite movies, tv shows, music. They can see who I talk to, who’s things I look at, who I’m friends with, what parties I’m going to, my sexual orientation, my religious views, my email, and hundreds of pictures of me. All the time, from any computer. People spend hours “stalking” other people, looking at their pictures and seeing who they are friends with. It’s ridiculous. I’m really not what people call a “Facebook Stalker”. I don’t care enough about what Billy Bob Sue is doing to take the time to look at all their shit. I have better things to do. Like wax the bottoms of my feet. Or water some fish.
But a lot of people don’t. Or they just really like to look at pictures of the popular kids they went to high school with. They like to see that the prom queen got fat or that that couple stayed together. They like to know who’s fucking who, who’s hanging out with whom. The fact is that people like to watch each other and they like to do it when the people they’re watching can’t see them. They just love to sit alone at night and look at pictures of each other. I don’t know why, they just do. We just do. I won’t say I haven’t gone nuts a few times and spent hours looking at the people I went to camp with eight years ago.
I’ve had my share of Facebook binges and how could I not? Facebook is everywhere. This virtual view into people’s lives has gone nova. Anybody can be on Facebook: companies, bands, brands now have Facebooks. Is this good or bad? Will people become desensitized to Facebook? Is it dying down or blowing up? Does it help or hinder our social interactions? And the big question: will it ever go away? I think the real question is will humanity ever grow tired of voyeurism? From ancient peepholes to more modern Degas paintings, history says no. The thing about voyeurism is that it’s mostly harmless to all involved. But like my Facebook-blocked mom always said: everything in moderation, or you might just find that you’ve forfeit your real life for a virtual life in a cyber world made of only light and programs. But on the other hand, how different are they, really?
