The Book of the Face

I joined Facebook a little more than a month ago after much shit from everyone I know, and I must say, it stresses me out.

First off, I live in a near constant fear that someone I don’t want to talk to is going to try and friend me (ahem, certain ex-uncles I have no care to chat with), and I’m going to have to ignore them, then run into them randomly and have them be pissed at me (don’t you wish you could be inside my head?).  Then, of course, is the fear of the people I try to ignore whenever I’m in Santa Cruz.  But mostly, my stress comes from the constant pressure of the updates.  That’s right, I said it, the updates raise my blood pressure.

I mean, come on, they have to be funny and provocative, interesting yet not completely telling, and most of all, they have to be short.  And I’m not going to lie, I check to see how many people have ‘liked’ my posts, how many people have commented.  Not to mention the fact that I can get all this on my blackberry, so I can check on things like this.

So, one might ask, why the hell would I want to subject myself to this?  Well, my brits did guilt me into joining.  I’m certain the phrase, ‘we could keep in touch better if you joined facebook,’ was used once or twice, but really the fascinating and shocking (to me) thing is, I actually do like Facebook.  I like being able to keep up with my friends and family without having to talk on the phone (because I really hate talking on the phone) and I like seeing people’s pictures, reading funny updates.  I like the political debates that rage on different posts.  I like hearing what everyone is up to on a regular basis.

For all it’s merits though, I think the Facebook/MySpace phenomenon begs the question, what did we do before this?  I mean, I definitely talked on the phone in high school, but not any more than I do now.  Did we just not know what was going on in everybody’s day to day life?  Do we need to know that now?  I’m guess I’m wondering, did we have more friends or less?  Did we really know more people and now we just kind of know them, or did we know just as many people, but not as well?

The thing about Facebook is it’s a censored version of yourself.  I mean, we don’t get to go on there and say, ‘man, I had a crazy night.  Got drunk, did something stupid with someone I didn’t know, crazy night.’ or  ‘God, that was some good weed!’  Our families get those updates, our parents, our aunts, our cousins.  No one needs to know things like that.  I don’t even tell my friends things like that.  At the same time, I think that Facebook affords us a look into the people around us.  We get to hear about their day (whatever part they choose to share), we get to hear about the random thoughts that appear in their heads, about the issues they choose to share.  And maybe that speaks more than anything else can.  Maybe just the feeling of being more connected is more important than whether we’re actually connected or not.

In any case, you can bet I’ll be fretting about what to write next.

Peace, Love and Facebooks,

Julia