My beef with Facebook is not a new one. Those closest to me know that I constantly struggle to find a use for the social giant. I mean, sure it’s great knowing what my 4th grade buddy ate for lunch, but is it really helpful? Does it add any value to my day at all? To me, it just seems like noise.
For example, this morning while sitting in traffic, hating how far I live from downtown, I felt the desire to tweet that my commute was nearly double what it usually is. Why? Where does this pressure to constantly update our audience about our current life drama come from?
Did it come from the invention of the status update? Or was it Twitter? Maybe it’s even older than that.
In the early days of the Internet we created screen names. Remember those? We were cool back then, creating names like southballer86 and jesuslover316. These names later became our online identities. Sure, they were only names, but creating them allowed us to control how we were perceived by our online community.
Fast-forward to present day. The same is true of our tweets, texts, pokes, and so on. All our updating contributes to our online identity. We all do it–we want everyone to see how interesting our lives are. We send photos to Facebook from our camera phones of what we ate for lunch, our dog’s latest outfit, or even the shameless self-portrait in front of the bathroom mirror.
The point? Maybe there isn’t one. Just an observation I made during my trek into work this morning.
Should I complain to my friends about this retched traffic?
Should I tweet that funny link?
I may just be generating noise. Maybe I’ll sit this one out.
Photo credit: firutin
Some very interesting questions Scott. I think it comes down for our generation's strong desire for community and a sense of individuality. We want to know and be known.
Oh, and I'm not sure if writing a blog post about it counts as sitting this one out
I think about this too. The idea that it's all (or most of it) is just noise. But I too have experienced added value to my life through relationships that are continued because of Facebook, relationships that are deepened and to me it has in some ways brought our disconnected society back together. 2 examples: Our pastor had become friends with a guy on FB because he was engaged to a regular attender. Through that FB relationship they had become acquainted. The first time the guy was actually at church they had a nice conversation for 5 minutes or and then realized that they had never met in person before. FB was a comfortable place to connect. Example 2: We have some friends that live in Iowa, we have hung out in person maybe 4-5 time in the last 4 years. But via FB we have had meaningful connections, and I would say we are almost better friends now then when we lived close by. [ok now one could ask: why do I feel the need to respond in such length to defend social media, My name is James and I'm a social media addict
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I tend to share your perspective on this James. But I also share your addicted status.