alone among "friends": the Facebook phenomena

A friend of mine has sworn off morning-internet time. Instead of stumbling out of bed and immediately firing up the laptop, she is spending her mornings quietly, with tea and cats and the occasionally squash baking or sauce making. For the most part, she has consciously let go of morning rituals that involve technology and chosen instead to make the start of her day one of contemplation, meditation and in-the-moment-ness.

I’ve been thinking about this friends’ practice much lately – especially in light of Facebook and other social networking sites, as well as techno-advances such as Twitter – and I think I’m slowly coming around to a similar perspective. After all, as much as Facebook can be fun, its name says it all: It’s about faces. (Oh yeah, and flair, which I never accept and find utterly useless.) Faces you know, faces you have not seen in years, smiling faces, serious faces. Instead of a picture of a face, one might see a picture of kids (quite common, really, though I find it odd to use one’s child as a stand in for yourself, as if the underlying message is “This is what I look like now…kids” and/or “please tell me my kids are so adorable you might weep”) or a pet, or perhaps a political slogan. The truly enigmatic among us don’t post a picture at all, opting instead for FB’s gender-neutral silhouette. When one does not have a “face” image on one’s page, comments start piling up: “When can we see you?” or “I can’t remember what you look like—and obviously you don’t want anyone else to, either.” No shit, smartass.

Of course, putting up photos of your mug and your friends and family elicits all sorts of comments from people the world over. Most of them are of the “You look so beautiful! And your family is beautiful too!” variety. Because really, for the most part, band geek Jill isn’t interested in much more than what prom queen Kim looks like now. Jill secretly hopes Kim is fat. Or barren.

There’s always the perfunctory initial message – “Joe! It’s been 20 years! Gotta love FB! What are you up to these days?” and then the response, in which someone attempts to sum up the past 17 years in five sentences and lots of :) ’ s and LOL's, then maybe one more exchange before Joe’s friend Jim is sufficiently filled in and has determined, rightly or wrongly, that Joe’s wife isn’t that hot and Joe isn’t a billionaire entrepreneur who may save Jim from his lifetime of Kinko’s drudgery.

Daily we are bombarded by what our “friends” are doing. Their quips in the What Are You Doing Now? box are supposed to enlighten and entertain, filling inquiring minds with details around which we fill in a story. People seem to feel guilty when they have nothing to “say” in their little box. Some even go so far as writing “I have nothing of great import to say here” or my personal favorite: “Bertha is.”

It’s hard enough to be present in our lives—truly present—but we add to this difficulty by inviting numerous faces into our day, some that we know well and some that are near-strangers to us. I’ve heard people speak of FB as if it has some crazy mind control over them—social networking as a phenomena that can be downright addictive, hence the nickname many use for FB, Crackbook—and this control drives them to obsessively check their account all day long. What is it, exactly, that we find so addictive? Peeking into people’s lives—what they let us SEE, anyway—and taking a stroll down memory lane? Joining 22 “causes” in one day and seeing how many people you can recruit to join those same “causes”? Becoming Ellen’s fan #334,977?

I think it’s just the pictures. It’s all about the pictures. Who REALLY clicks on the Info tab, anyway?

So then what? We look at a picture of our roommate from sophomore year and think “she hasn’t changed a bit.” We satisfy our (sudden?) curiosity but more than that, there is connection, and as disembodied as it is, it’s what we have to work with, and work with it we do. Facebook has been used as a successful tool of political mobilization (eat your heart out MoveOn.org), as a job search vehicle (take that LinkedIn) and as a way for large groups of people to create virtual communities around events or personal interests (like MySpace, but with a hell of a lot less annoying graphics and cacophonous music). It’s become a portal for people of all ages to find friends and make new ones. Virtually.

And therein I find my real issue with FB: all this assumed intimacy. In certain cases, I am asked to “friend” a person that I barely know, simply because someone in my immediate social sphere thinks I “know” this person or should, at the very least. If I add this “friend,” I am invited into a whole new world of images and quotes and musical tastes and links to newspaper articles that I would certainly miss had it not been for my new “friend” and her erudite tastes. Of course, the fact remains that I have not shaken my new friend’s hand, or seen her house, or met the husband she calls her “Bubbs.” My new friend lists Twilight as her latest obsession, yet states that her age is 34. (I thought Twilight targeted the “High School Musical” Abercrombie set.) She has no political views but is a Catholic and lists her favorite movies as “the Saw series” and “anything with Matt Damon” All in all, I’m baffled by my new “friend.” I'm not convinced we would have jack shit to talk about, frankly.

Being fully present in our frenetic lives isn’t easy. All too often we are disembodied, disinterested, disengaged. Sometimes one’s survival depends on these states of being; we can’t be tuned in all the time, there’s too much static, too much headache-inducing input. The phone is ringing, our Blackberry is beeping, the kid is crying, the television is on, the neighbor is building a shed and his table saw whines through an entire afternoon. Focus can be as scarce as tofu at a county fair in Texas.

So why do we invite less focus? What is it about distracting ourselves with images of people and snippets of their personal narrative that is so appealing? Do we seek ourselves in those images, straining for validation (through what I can only call virtual relative experience) that we are on the right path or have made the right choices? Are we now so busy and preoccupied that we actually value this means of “connection” precisely because it is void of any kind of emotional or physical engagement and that's just.too.hard?

Another way of thinking about it is this: Is Facebook just a massive time waster and an excuse to “talk” to people about ourselves, show off our kids, tout our new business and keep a favorable distance from folks with whom we really don’t have any interest in developing a relationship? I don’t know the answer; I’m just thinking out loud here. Out of my 183…oops, now 184… friends, how many of them would I invite to, say, my wedding?

There’s another part to this, too, one that unnerves me because it most resembles those unforgettable (unfortunately) Valentine’s Day card swaps at grade school. Remember that torture? With great anticipation, the whole class would decorate an old shoe box with loving pronouncements and paper and candy hearts then make a slit in the top so our "admirers" could give us Valentine cards. (Who the hell thought this was a good idea?) Then, on the afternoon of the Forced Lovefest, we would leave our handspun boxes on our desk and everyone would mill around with their cache of little cards, dropping them in their respective boxes. Luckily I was never one of those kids who returned to her seat, opened her box, and found a measly two cheap ass envelopes. But I saw kids that did, and even in writing this, I tear up thinking about the look of disappointment on their faces.

When you “ask” someone to be your “friend” and they don’t reply, should you take it personally? Does it mean that they don’t want to put a Valentine in your box? Or is it simply that they get what a farce this whole “friend” thing really is, and they only signed up for FB because of a nagging niece who felt compelled to drag her auntie into the modern age—and the auntie, of course, could not refuse?

I’m grateful to have “found” some of the people with whom I once had a genuine connection. I liked them IRL (in real life) and I have no reason to believe, all these years later, that I still wouldn’t enjoy their company. Through my finding these people, their friends – perhaps some mutual acquaintances—have found me. Most days I don’t mind being found. But on that random day when someone requests my friendship and I experience a flash of memory that does not leave me nostalgic and warm hearted, I yearn – once again – to be lost.