Okay, I get it. It's a movie. Some facts are dramatized, characters are shaded, events are spun, but the bottom line sent some loud and clear messages. You can profit big from stealing someone else's idea and presenting it as your own, Facebook is a symptom of how narcissistic our society has become, and a friend is now really only an acquaintance six times removed, whom you may never meet in real life. That alone is reason enought to eschew FB in my mind.
I never liked Facebook, or the other variations on social networking, even before I saw this movie. I don't tweet, I don't FB, not on MySpace - which reminds me of a junior high-school girl's notebook.
Who cares if I'm driving to the doctor's office? Or what I had for dinner at Olive Garden? Or what I watched on the boob tube? I just don't think that I'm that all-fired important that passing acquaintances give a hoot that I'm having a bad hair day or gushing over how wonderful and loving my hubby is? In many ways, it seems that dedicated FB fans are desperately trying to prove to themselves how wonderful their life is. If its so great, why are they spending so much time away from it in the virtual world of FB? And why are they so miserable doing it?
And now, preying on nameless and anxious fears that you might miss posting or reading something pretending to be important, FB offers the mobile wireless umbilical option, so you never have to experience FB withdrawal.
I know people who spend hours a day playing games on FB. Like gamblers who hock everything for one last roll of the dice, they are addicted to the fantasy worlds like Farmville and Mafia Wars. They stay up all night playing games. I actually stayed up all night playing a video game once. . .twenty six years ago. It was fun, but I was never interested enough to do it again.
FBers lose touch with reality. They don't produce anything. They expend hours being unproductive, fooling themselves into thinking they are being productive. And now, studies are showing that FBer's suffer anxiety from their FB experience. Why participate in anything that serves only to decrease your productivity while increasing your stress? How insane is that?
They talk about their virtual worlds, as if anyone else even knows what they are talking about, or cares. I don't care if your pig got out on Farmville. I've been told there is a small community in SE Colorado--a farm community for gossakes--that is addicted to FB and they all play Farmville. Farmers and ranchers playing Farmville (eyes rolling).
This whole friends thing is so . . .high school. I'll bet Whatshisname didn't have friends until he became famous for making FB. Wanting to be popular, he created a site dedicated to how many friends you could entice into your circle. In so doing, he brought the whole immature high school/college culture of fraternity and popularity into the adult world as a massive personal distraction and expanding it to pretenses of marketing so as to cater to businesses who prostitute themselves so you will "like" them. Silly me, if I like a business, I patronize it, I don't vote for it.
But what FBers call friends, I call acquaintances. After all, a friend by definition, is someone you can count on to take certain risks on your behalf, secure that you won't betray their trust. Acquaintances on the other hand, are just people you know who pass in and out of your world without contributing anything meaningful to enhancing your life, often leeching off of you in an effort to enhance themselves. Not that there is anything wrong with being an acquaintance, but it's certainly not a friend and shouldn't pretend to be a friend. Mature adults don't collect acquaintances masquerading as friends, only shallow, superficial people do.
I actually tried a FB practice in real life - I commented during a phone call how I had to take kitty to the vet to get his nuggets removed. My friend didn't care. She continued on the really important subject we were discussing. My feelings weren't hurt. My friends and I really do focus on more important things than the minutia of our respective lives.And we don't engage in insincere ego-stroking or false interest in nonsense that is so prevelant on FB.
Which brings me back to "I don't do FB." Neither do most of my real friends. We all find it a superficial drain on our valuable time, reeking of immature school social posturing. We all grew up and put away childish things to get on with real life.It really is a lot more fulfilling, and fun than this useless, fake social club world.
So, to all you FB fanatics who care about the minutia in someone else's life, I've got to pick up kitty sans his nuggets. ((Poor baby boy.))
Get a life! Yes, it takes some work, but it's worth it.
