Currently, my Facebook profile is “friends” with 666 other Facebook profiles. While that number (the number of the beast) is “metal,” it’s not quite accurate because at best, only 20-25 of those people fit the true definition of the word “friend,” and I am truly proud that I am able to call them that.
At some point I must have at least met the other 641-646 people on here whether they’re: old friends, classmates, coworkers, bosses, exes, fans, stalkers, stalkees, or even people whose only connection to me is a mutual friend. The fact remains that, once becoming FB friends with a person, you can remain completely caught up to date with the activities of that person regardless of whether or not you are friends with them in real life or if you have ever met that person to begin with. Additionally, we can thank FB for taking the excitement out of going to high school reunions. The purpose of going to a reunion is to catch up with people and find out what they have been doing with their lives since graduation, now with FB all you have to do is look at your News Feed and there… your caught up.
For much of today’s youth (sadly, including myself) Facebook provides an automatic and life consuming way for us have “friends” and keep in touch with people for a virtually unlimited amount of time, completely bypassing the kind of effort that would be required for any two people in the real world to connect and maintain a relationship of any kind. It even changes the way we interact with each other, it makes everything much less personal and detached. Instead of saying “Call me later,” we say, “Facebook me,” almost as if we can’t be friends with them in real life unless we are also friends with them on Facebook. What really got me thinking about this was the realization that as of right now, out of every true friend that I’m lucky enough to have, ONE and ONLY ONE of those people does not have a facebook.
Eventually, there will be a time where people from every living generation actively use Facebook and for many it will be the be all and end all of their online existence. This would elevate Facebook above being merely an online representation of human culture and society– millions or billions of users constantly updating their statuses, chatting with friends, commenting and tagging photos, stalking, being stalked, checking in, liking, getting into/out of relationships, and anything else FB will be able to do in the future– FB will be it’s own culture and it’s own society. Humans will no longer communicate with each other in reality, instead our FB profiles will be avatars in a virtual world that (poorly) simulates human interaction with no hope of ever living up to the elements that make our existence meaningful.
The painfully complicated existence that we call “life” exists in varying shades of grey because as humans we are forced to perceive and experience our existence through the prism of our past experiences… our failures, successes, good/bad deeds, mistakes, tragedies, triumphs, and all the other factors that make up the fabric of who we are. FB takes those shades of grey and attempts to simplify it down to black and white and for everything in between you have only one option to choose: “it’s complicated.” If only life were that simple where we could encapsulate an entire spectrum of humanity with those two simple words. FB was never meant to be a substitute for real world interactions but people are using it in exactly that way, whether they realize it or not and more people do it each day.
We have already let facebook render HS reunions obsolete… It’s only a matter of time until we allow Facebook to go SkyNet on us, concluding that it’s complexly coded, unrealistically streamlined, and frighteningly voyeuristic virtual existence is superior to that of the one us humans live in… it’s only option: to destroy us all. The scariest part of all is that in all likelihood, it wont reach the point where Facebook becomes self aware and takes us down because if things keep going the way they’re going, then we will choose to leave the real world behind and interact only as avatars in a world that can only be as complex as the code used to build it. Then the society of FB profiles left behind will continue to exist and interact with each other… no longer will we be burdened by life’s difficult emotions: discontent, pain, sadness, personal loss, embarrassment, shame, and worst of all… hate, but, without those exact feelings, we would never be able to realize the meaning and reward of: contentment, happiness, personal gain, comfort, pride, and the most important of all… love.
Now if you’ll excuse me, time to look at hot bikini pics of my FB friends on summer vacations. I don’t wanna hear it… if you didnt want me to look at (all of) them then you wouldn’t put em up.
