YES, there’ve been thousands of articles, columns – posts, even! – on why anybody in their right mind should delete their Facebook profile, permanently. And, NO, mine doesn’t mirror that of every other John and Jane.
You see, what I’ve discovered after erasing, for all eternity, that little archive titled ‘My Profile,’ is the sense of tranquility that comes when the veil of illusion and unnecessary obligations is lifted.
After all, isn’t that what Facebook is? My reading of various pieces with catchphrases like ‘Why Facebook is Stealing Your Youth’ and ‘Facebook: Mother of All Insecurity,’ prior to making my decision, left me surprised. It wasn’t the fact that ‘The Social Network’ encouraged subconscious comparisons of oneself with one’s peers, nor that different applications can readily access one’s personal details, that was astounding. Funnily enough, it wasn’t what these journalists had to say as much as what they didn’t say that was uncanny.
Thankfully for all of you (quite modest, aren’t I?), I will attempt to fill in this gap. The bone I’d like to pick with Facebook is its ability of giving its users the impression that they have an amazing social life. Every friend request, be from bosom buddy to the line-snorting undergrad you met at last week’s pub crawl to the total stranger from the other side of the world who also sent an accompanying message asking you to be his mail-order bride, is seen by the majority of users in the same way: an assurance of their ‘rising’ popularity and charisma.
After surviving the cutting room floor, those deemed worthy of being ‘contacts’ become an addition to the individual’s friends list. As the numbers expand, then burgeon, the profile user assumes they’ve enough so-called ‘friends’ (though, here, acquaintance may be a better term) that they avoid all real-life opportunities of conversing with others who probably share the same interests as them. As a result, they find themselves resorting to spending hours a day on Facebook as a substitute – though in their eyes, ‘conduit’ – for social interchange. Because, after all, didn’t Facebook say these people online were their ‘friends’?
On the other end of the spectrum, Facebook users may be filled with a sense of false confidence that leads them to make wrong and impulsive decisions in person-to-person exchanges – mainly in the form of misreading social cues – and some of these actions end up being irreversible. So you see, kids, both these situations land you in a terrible rut. You either become diagnosed with that near-irreparable ailment known as ‘Social Media Addiction’ or just lose all touch with humanity and its social cues.
What’s worse, your contacts’ every status update, photo upload and location display, unless specifically customised by the Facebook user, is apparent on every corner of the newsfeed. Updates of their latest shenanigans and escapades are placed – or rather, glamorised – on that bland blue-white backdrop. Upon traversing these delicate pieces of information, the ‘owner’ of the profile (okay, that word’s inappropriate – I think Facebook legally owns every person’s profile, a little detail that is probably written in the tiniest font in the smallest corner of a hundred-page long contract) feels they somehow know the poster quite intimately.
Undoubtedly, drawing such conclusions makes for either awkward or rude exchanges (one or the other, take your pick!) with these people, especially when they begin to think you’ve been stalking them relentlessly and building a CIA-level file on them when, really, their life stories are basically pasted on the main page and being talked about by every mutual friend you both share! Unless the compiler of those posts is an amigo, you more often than not should expect to be interrogated in that ‘defensive-but-sweet’ tone of how you know about these goings-on, and the who, what, when, where and why that aided you in finding out about them.
Both of you are right in that situation. The person you’re talking with is right in surmising that you know way too much about them. And you’re not at fault because it was simply Facebook that gave you the illusion that, as your ‘friend,’ you are entitled to peruse their profile and look at all their pictures and latest activities. While such uncomfortable circumstances have never occurred to me personally, I’ve witnessed far too many conversations that’ve soured upon mention of what so-and-so, according to Facebook, has been doing lately. All-in-all, just too much drama and passive aggressiveness.
Also in the dramatics department is Facebook’s encouragement of online cliques. That there are privacy settings on messages and event invitations means that people, whether at school, university or the workplace, will begin scheming against their peers, even if they are in the same day-to-day, in-person friendship group. For instance, Sara might invite Michelle, Lucy and Dale to their soiree, but deliberately ignore Penelope because she’s from a low-income family and still manages to get straight As on every subject.
Over time, as photographs and other forms of evidence (drunken texts to the wrong person, statuses written during an absolute state of inebriation, the list goes on) emerge of ‘secret’ parties, those privy to the plot will carry their conversations from private to public spheres, meaning the Facebook wall. The ‘friend’ left out will feel isolated, upset and unable to comprehend why he or she was singled out as the black sheep.
Such purposeful neglect is, inarguably, a form of cyber-bullying. Although, with mobile phones and pagers, it would’ve existed nonetheless, Facebook – with its public and private domains acting side-by-side, to the point where they’ve become almost indistinguishable – acts as another enabler to this growing societal problem.
Speaking of soirees, ‘partays,’ and other festivities, another detestable aspect of Facebook is that one gets invited to every birthday party under the sun! I’m twenty-one this year, though many of my friends had turned this age the year before. The latter half of 2013 – on Facebook, to say the at least – was rambunctious with invitations to the celebrations of people I’d met during orientation week at uni and never saw again. The problem rests with that annoying button that controls who one invites. Lazy potatoes will just click ‘Invite All’ and expect guests to RSVP and figure their way through.
Some of these I attended, and found I was simply a pawn in their bigger plan of seeming popular and ‘loved by all’ in their photographs of the night. Call me a person of solitude, but wouldn’t you say that seventy people and thirty plus-ones at a ‘bday bash’ is a little excessive? Particularly if the 21-er doesn’t actually know about eighty percent of them?
At other parties, I was the one who knew the birthday-ee well, and witnessed wallflowers whom my friend had asked to come, yet knew little about them and forced me to make conversation with them while she spoke to our mutual friends, whom she knew intimately and shared many memorable moments with. To be fair, she did say my ability to talk with strangers was exceptional, but, in all honesty, I also came to that party to have a good time as well as catch up with our mutual friends. Had I known I was to become her PR manager, I might’ve requested a small fee.
So there you have it. A post on how distinctly irritating Facebook can be. In terms of a physical social life, or a means of preventing one. In terms of making foreign the common cues and gestures expected in a social exchange. In terms of fostering cliquish behaviours that destroy friendships and classify as a form of cyberbullying. And last, but not least, in terms of obtaining seat-fillers for one’s birthday party because looking like you have friends has somehow become cooler than actually having friends. What a sad, sad place this world has become.
ApesGrapes&NarrowEscapes 