Facebook is one of the most useless inventions of humanity. There is, however, one service that it offers which makes it so wildly popular: Facebook erodes guilt. Instead of feeling bad about losing touch with all those people who used to matter to us but have now stopped being of interest, we can add them to our list of friends on Facebook and pretend that we are following their lives.
The downside of this simulacrum of a social life is that it erases a possibility of self-analysis. Why do certain people stop being of any interest to us? What erodes friendships? As the Facebook list of fake friends remains the same, we never have to notice that our priorities, interests and preferences have changed or wonder why that happened.
In a similar way, Facebook offers a simulacrum of political engagement. People keep posting endless snippets of articles followed by snippets of their own commentary. This superficial approach to the news cycle makes them feel politically active and socially responsible. It also fosters an illusion that one’s fake friends who are not even a part of one’s life any longer form some sort of a community that can promote change. In reality, however, Facebook sociability is as empty and meaningless as Facebook activism.
The most genuine and sincere Facebook users are the ones who post endless photos of kittens. The robotic and senseless nature of this act is a metaphor for Facebook itself: it doesn’t matter which particular inanity you are posting today as long as you post something and keep the illusion of a shared space alive.
Clarissa's Blog 
It can make it somewhat easier for people to have some contact with family and friends that move around the world. Though much of it is inane.
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As one of those people who keep moving around the world :-), my experience is that there are people I really want to be in touch with and I am. And then there is everybody else and I dismiss them to the Facebook realm.
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I don’t know. I really like Facebook for keeping in touch. On a day to day basis, I prefer writing to talking on the phone and it’s provides a nice way to check in with all my siblings at once. It’s also a great way of sharing pictures; this way I get to see pictures of my nieces and nephews almost daily. And even though I live far from them, I get to watch them grow up. I can only visit a few times a year so FB provides a “bridge” for me.
And of course, there are some old friends who I talk to over FB. Before I would have e-mailed them in their private e-mails. Now I e-mail through FB. I like it because it’s all organized in one space. Again, I generally prefer writing to talking and FB just facilitates all that for me.
I still use the phone of course and I visit everyone that’s important to me. So FB isn’t the only way I have of communicating. It’s just a nice way to touch base. But I have kept my facebook friend list quite small and very very private. So maybe that’s a difference. (And of course, there are a few people from graduate school who have managed to find me that I would have been fine losing contact with. But they aren’t FB’s draw for me.)
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I don’t quite have the all or nothing approach that seems to work for you. 😉
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“All or nothing approach that seems to work for [me]”? What does that mean?
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Yes, photos. Somebody publishes a photo “Here is my daughter’s 12th Birthday!” Immediately, a chorus reacts: “OMG, how cute! She is all grown up! Looks just like you! I miss you both so much!”
Then somebody posts photos of their vacations. And a different chorus chimes in with the exact same round of gushings: “Oh, how amazing! I’m totally jealous of you! Have fun! I miss you both so much!”
I wonder why Zuckerberg still hasn’t introduced a possibility of automatic superficial gushings. You press a button and whenever a photo appears, your account publishes an automatic “OMG, how cute!” and the requisite “I miss you so much!”
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But I like seeing photos of my nieces and nephews! 🙂
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Clarissa’s approach to facebook, not yours. I pretty much have a similar view to yours. 🙂
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I like very much seeing photos of my friends’ children, my wife’s grandchild, etc. I am not interested in pictures of pets, but I do enjoy an occasional picture of wild animals such as giraffes or wolves. One of my Facebook friends posts wonderful pictures of outdoor scenes that I would never spend the time to look for myself. I do really like seeing them. It was also a big time saver in the planning of a 90-th birthday party for my mother last year.
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In these times of the NSA running amok, I find the idea of posting so much stuff related to one’s daily life and habits online foolish in the extreme. I’m not on FB though, so I can’t comment on the effects it has on human relationships. I can just mourn the many interesting forums that seem to have had their users poached by it.
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I’m still quite new to FB and the biggest shock I get from it ever time I open it is how superficial and inane eevrything is. There are people I hadn’t been in touch with for years before joining FB but I remembered them as interesting, profound individuals. And now I reconnect with them on Facebook and it feels like witnessing them all revert to the age of 8. Of course, it isn’t them it’s the medium that turns even the brightest star into a gushing, gasping mediocrity.
There is this woman I used to know in grad school who was one of the most original thinkers I ever encountered. Her FB thread, though, is a collection of the cheesiest motivational slogans ever. It’s like I’m peering into her darkest side that should have never been exposed.
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I can’t say enough how much I love this post and agree with you. There is a reason why some people fade out of your life. And are meant to! I interact with people on FB that I never was great friends with, but they seem very interested in what I say on FB. Weird. I don’t get it.
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@Fie
The thing is for many of us is that we do change and grow. I know some people I had nothing in common with when I was younger and I seem to have some now. Outside of facebook I would have not had a chance to encounter them again. Mind you, it is true some never leave childhood and are probably better left to our distant memories. 🙂
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There is this website back in my country where you can meet all of your former classmates. N discovered that now that he lives in the US and has a prestigious job, his former female classmates who never noticed his existence back in high school are hugely into him. Since this takes place in Russia, the existence if a heavily pregnant wife is not a deterrent.
And I discovered that I can’t make myself feel any interest towards former classmates.
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Titfortat – I certainly agree that we change and grow. That means we can both grow out of and grow in to old/new relationships. But do I really need to be ‘friends’ with my ex-boyfriend from almost 20 years ago on FB? Not really. Am I though? Oh sure.
I think that growth and change comes out of leaving things/people behind a lot of times. If they keep popping up, though, it’s sometimes unsettling and creates unnecessary interior tension that stresses you out. Or at least, it sometimes stresses me out. I find I am happier when I’m not on FB very much.
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Fie: this is exactly how I feel.
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@Fie
That is why I dont accept many friend requests on FB. Unless of course it was the hottie who thought I was a nerd in highschool. 😉
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N gets so terrified when it happens that it’s very funny. 🙂
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Not that I disagree with your observations, Clarissa.
But your post begs the questions:
What is real friendship?
What is real activism?
What is meaningful interaction?
And can such things exist online?
Facebook is not where the young-uns are anymore. Sure they have
Facebook pages, but the real online action is not happening there. FFS, the intelligence agencies troll Facebook for information. Several dating sites that I use keep begging me to connect Facebook to their sites, along with LinkedIn. I don’t even comment on sites that require to give up my Facebook page information. There are employers who ask for access to your Facebook page for you to “friend” them, as part of your application (I’ve experienced this — for nothing jobs). These are known facts. If I want to know about what’s happening with people in their twenties, I check other platforms. The most interesting ideas and interaction I’ve found elsewhere — even in my twenties. Even the most interesting fan art I find elsewhere.
Facebook is just the most corporatized and ubiquitious of these platforms that is the most successful in cannibalizing the trivia of human interaction in order to better to sell products. I don’t fill out my gender or my age or my location or “like” many things. To expect deepness from Facebook is folly. And truthfully, much human interaction is filler and fluff.
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My post is provoking these really profound questions. That makes it ore meaningful than the standard FB interaction. 🙂 🙂
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People come and go and that’s just how life is. If I don’t meet somebody on a regular basis then how can I call that person a friend ?
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It’s a very good means for me to keep in touch with some African characters I would not otherwise have met. I should make it clear, perhaps, that with regard to African culture, there is a tendency to befriend a tribe. If they find you are friendly, you will have endless members of the tribe queuing up to be your friend. That suits me quite a bit as you get to meet some very interesting people like that.
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For instance, consider this useful commentary:
At this point in life…..with all this Zimbabwe situation that has been on..and the past five years when United States went thru a financial meltdown…..and yet got won by a first black President Obama….and we fast forward to today…..I think its high time….Zimbabwe deserve an action hero in Hollywood who will not take shit but get things done.a native Zimbabwean who speaks real shona but not afraid to fuck up another Western ally and outsmart CIA MOSSAD and INTERPOL combine…..otherwise will be for the people of Zimbabwe whose election got made in Israel….and import from China with a Made in China label silent….a movie idea
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It all depends on who you have on Facebook. If you can stand the platform. I can’t stand Twitter — too jumpy. But on Facebook I have a bunch of news posters so yes, I read news on Facebook, it works like a good aggregator for me. It isn’t my primary mode of keeping up with people I actually know. I am in a lot of interest groups on it for professional and yes, activist things, and also community groups: the municipal kayaking club is going out to see the full moon on the bayou, the hurricane shelters are here and here, etc. I also find I can crowdsource questions on it and get useful answers, often from unforeseen sources… and then here in town we use it as a sort of community bulletin board. It is of course evil, and Zuckerberg is evil.
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If a prospective employer cannot ask a woman if she intends to have children I find it hard to believe that s/he could ask someone to provide their Facebook details. That is a gross intrusion into privacy and should not be allowed.
I find FB a useful tool. It’s less intrusive than the telephone and demands less time than sitting down and writing your news in emails to different people. You can also get hints and ideas on problems, like for my cat the other day which crapped on my duvet and I wondered a) why he did this and b) how to get rid of the pong on the mattress. I got some great ideas back.
I communicate with various groups via FB and it’s handy to have everything in one place. FB can be as inane or interesting as you make it.
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You are very European. 🙂 Employers do ask that and a lot more in North America. Discrimination during the hiring process is rife and people are required to provide all kinds of very personal information.
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They ask it in Europe too (at least behind the former Iron Curtain). A student reported job interview:
Interviewer ; Are you planning on having kids in the next couple of years?
Student : I thought it’s illegal to ask that question.
Interviewer : So?
I don’t know if they ask for facebook type stuff. I don’t they do but I could be wrong.
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Several years ago in oral exams, a student was talking about the history and development of facebook. In the break I asked a visitng US Teacher “I heard about it, but I still dont’ get it, what exactly is facebook for?”
After getting over the shock (you might have thought that I’d asked: Why are reptilians for Lemuria sending coded messages to my dog’s brain and how can I decode them?) They tried to explain the idea using words like ‘social network’ and ‘keeping up with what your friends are doing?’ etc etc etc and I kept stammering “But, but, but… what’s it _for_?”
I still don’t get it.
In related news, a friend, after the death of a parent, realized that the purpose of goodwill (and other) thrift stores is largely to relieve the guilt of throwing away the deceased person’s things. After a person dies there’s a huge amount of stuff that no one in the family wants but would feel wrong about throwing away. Calling the goodwill people (who show up with a truck and used to take almost anything you asked them to) let’s people think they’re being charitable while allowing them to get rid of a lot of unwanted stuff. I had not figured that one out yet (though I had been through the process myself a couple of times).
A person who can turn the relief of feelings of guilt into a revenue stream will never starve. They might not get rich, but they’ll always do okay.
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“I still don’t get it.”
At the end of the day, it’s just a communication tool–like a blog, or a phone, or e-mail, or twitter. Some things work for some people; some things don’t work. (I for instance LOATHE Twitter.) But as a side note, what I REALLY don’t get? Pinterest. I seriously don’t understand the point at all.
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I don’t even know what Pinterest is. I barely got over tumblr. Brrrr.
And yes, Twitter is very bizarre.
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Pfff, tumblr is a great method of delivering pretty pictures to the front of one’s eyeballs.
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