I
haven’t logged onto Facebook in over a week (sorry if I missed anyone’s
birthdays), which as sad as it sounds, is both an accomplishment and marks me
hitting another stage of my life. There are so many things about Facebook that
irritate me to the point that I am actually 0.000004 seconds from
deactivating.
The
main problem that I have with Facebook is that I joined when it first came out, which was
junior (?) year of college. This was the
era of the first-mover-Facebook-mania: In other words, if you saw someone at a
frat party one night who happened to be your freshman roommates’ boyfriend’s
best friend’s brother, you were immediately Facebook friends by the end of the
night (and this was quite a feat since this occurred even before the existence
of smart phones). So I have way too many
of these clowns as my Facebook friends and it’s to the point where if someone
says, “Oh Amara! You know Joe such-and-such?” that 9 out of 10 times I’m thinking,
“Wow, I do?” And then I look at his profile picture, think to myself that maybe
he looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t remember anything about him nor how I
could possibly know this individual. So I have some absurd number of friends
(900+?), most of whom I don’t even know exist, nor do I care.
So
when some major event now happens, like Jeremy Lin leads the Knicks to another
win – I get this explosion of a Facebook newsfeed where 800+ individuals are
utilizing every imaginable conjugation of Lin’s name to say the exact same
G—Damn thing: “This is Linsanity!!!!” “We are in the midst of Linsania!!!!”
“Knicks are Linning!!!!”
Like seriously?! Is this necessary? Are you supposed to be showing us all how witty you are by coming up with this ‘novel’ conjugation of a last name? And if you saw that 800+ people have written the same exact thing before you did, is it absolutely necessary to jump on this bandwagon?
Like seriously?! Is this necessary? Are you supposed to be showing us all how witty you are by coming up with this ‘novel’ conjugation of a last name? And if you saw that 800+ people have written the same exact thing before you did, is it absolutely necessary to jump on this bandwagon?
And
then when it’s a special occasion- Ok, let’s take Valentine’s Day, for example… On
such a day, the 400+ females on my newsfeed apparently feel like it is 100%
necessary to promote the large bouquet of flowers that they received at work
from their significant others along with several photos of said bouquets and the
associated [and dreaded] social-media-PDA captions… Captions like, “Look at what my baby got me!!”
“Muah!!! I looooooove himmmmmm!!!!” “Best boyfriend in the WORLD!!!!!!!!!!” “HUGGIESSSS!!!
KISSESSSSSS!!!” “Best Valentine’s Day everrrrrrrrrr, baby!!!”
Wtf? I can’t look at this four-hundred times
in a row. I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a pencil. It’s disgusting.
Ok,
yes, I did blog about receiving a heart-shaped pizza on Valentine’s Day, but I
reserved it for the 20 or so of my closest friends/coworkers that I speak to on
a day-to-day basis, who care about my life and thoughts enough to read my blog
(or at least I hope, lol – please inform me if this is not the case).
I
was talking to Julie about this today and we were saying that Facebook has
evolved into this new type of monster.
It has turned us into a society of self-important, self-consumed people
that think that Facebook is a means of receiving validation for our actions
from the 800+ people that we’ve ever encountered in our life. It irritates me when I realize that I’ve
absorbed myself into becoming a part of this narcissistic society.
Yes,
there are definitely people that utilize Facebook as a useful, collaborative
tool (e.g. as a catalyst for the Egyptian protests, etc.); However, the 95%
that utilize this resource as a self-promotion mechanism instead, overshadow my
newsfeed so that I don’t even get a chance to see information from the ones
that actually use the site valuably.
I’ve
decided that I’d rather get my news from following the WSJ, Reuters, BBC News,
The Economist and the Financial Times on Twitter than from Joe-such-and-such
who I can’t remember enough to determine whether he has any type of credibility
in telling me about an earthquake that he thinks he experienced 2 minutes ago…
but really it was only because he saw that 315 of his friends just posted the
same thing.
And
because of my later adoption of Twitter, my followers and the people I follow
are confined to a close group of friends who are forced to adhere to a 140
character ‘status’ limit, which prevents them from overzealously embellishing
on Valentine’s Day or the Knicks or about how awesome they are. And also, my close friends aren’t like that.
For
this reason, I will shortly be saying goodbye to Facebook and maintaining my
social media presence solely via Twitter.
I’m
off my soapbox now. My apologies for offending the Facebook enthusiasts.
Sorry, I'm not sorry.
Sorry, I'm not sorry.
#sorryimnotsorry #winning
ReplyDeleteI feel like twitter is the exact same thing minus with two very important differences. Of course the 140 character limit, and your family most likely doesn't follow you on twitter. There is the same amount of self promotion on twitter, only you get to see your favorite jackass celeb talk too.
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