Know of the time when your mind’s spacing out and your fingers start typing things in your address bar and pressing Enter?
It used to be Yahoo.com that I go to when I have nothing in mind. I don’t know why but it seems like my mind’s portal of choice. Uh, it’s not mine, it’s my mind’s. Anyway, it has since changed to Facebook.com and I am concerned.
I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook.com, that it is that I love to hate it. Facebook.com has my photographs and life trapped in it and just the other day I was using Facebook to date a particular moment of my life. I am so reliant on a channel that it almost is part of me. My friends are there, okay, my friends’ profiles are there. Facebook manages to make me feel I’ve done my social homework everyday and it fulfills my need to be close to people somewhat sufficiently.
But, there are times when I typed Facebook.com on my browser windows only to close it in defiance. This is the rebel facility in my mind acting up. I call it a bunch of names:
- Unsocial
- Fake social
- Toilet status machine
- Rant Reader 2.0
At one point of time I blocked myself from Facebook.com by, very smartly, adding Facebook.com to my /etc/hosts file. I remained proud of myself till the day I had to do some work on Facebook. I now have it unblocked and Chrome is picking it up as one of my most frequented sites.
So let’s look at my most frequented sites:
- Hacker News
- Google Reader
- YouTube
- Gmail
- Cafyn
- CNN
Okay I can’t continue my topic from here, let’s go back to the topic on Facebook.
My point is Facebook has become some sort of a validation tool. Nothing happened unless it’s on Facebook. Went to Australia? No you didn’t, because it ain’t on Facebook. Which is why it took me so long to put up my Sydney and Melbourne photographs (I still have yet to). I felt a part of me is putting it up to confirmed my presence in Australia and that disturbed me.
And think of the time you do something good and write on Facebook.com. What happens? Your friends flock to Like your comment. You feel pleased and your act of kindness is validated by their likes. For the lazy, Facebook is the new moral compass. “I’m not sure what I am doing is right or not. I’ll put it on Facebook.”
Then the rants. Facebook is the most unhappy website for me because I read far too many complaints I feel unhappy too. There’s just too many rants on Facebook until I feel a little less reading lightens my mood.
Now look at your news feed and look at what people are sharing on Facebook. I’m not sure about your news feed but mine is filled with music videos. “Charles shared this with me the –” I stopped and thought for a while. Well he did share it to Facebook but it wasn’t specifically to me. Suddenly sharing the way I understand is evolving. I don’t feel the exclusivity anymore and they’re sharing everything they found interesting. I missed the times when shares are with more intent, now things are just so random. Furthermore I don’t feel my friend really shared things with me. My friend just delegated the sharing to Facebook. My friend is Facebook.
I am back to blocking Facebook. I’m staying away from it for a while. It’s getting depressing.
