Facelessbook by Kevin Neidorf | Writing Resources

Facelessbook, by Kevin Neidorf

Facelessbook

My foot slipped off the paper tray of my computer desk and banged into the base of my rolling chair, probably harder than I have ever smashed an appendage into a piece of office furniture. I didn’t feel a thing. I’d always made a bad habit out of elevating and crossing my legs while I spend extended amounts of time on the Internet, so it wasn’t hard for me to understand why my feet had lost blood circulation and in turn, feeling, after remembering I had been sitting in front of a CRT monitor for the past three hours. What had I been doing on the computer for this incredible period of time though? Homework? Nope. Reading the news? Nah. Searching the confines of E-Bay for crap I don’t need? Not even that. I’ve been spending an unhealthy portion of a perfectly good Saturday afternoon lurking around “A social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them,” ironically, all by myself (Facebook.com).

I first heard of Facebook when I was going into my sophomore year of high school. I was at a party when a girl who was taking pictures mentioned that she was “going to be up all night tagging,” and had no idea what she was referencing. As far as I knew, for decades, the universally understood meaning of ‘tagging’ had been either spraying graffiti or gunning someone down in cold blood. Keeping in mind that I was a part of the generation that found it commonplace to turn adjectives such as ‘bad’ into nouns, and products like TiVo into verbs, I wasn’t sure if I had any right to question the usage of such word, so I kept quiet. I stood in the crossfire of looks of acknowledgement and head-noddings she received from her friends and other surrounding acquaintances, totally clueless. I tried to spot anyone else in the room that shared my look of bewilderment to no avail.

“Tagging what?” I asked.

“Pics, on Facebook?” she snottily inquired, as if I legitimately did something wrong. And with that, I had to ask one more question, which jettisoned me into a modern day’s no-man’s land:

“What’s Facebook?”

With a fresh slug in the skull 1920’s gang lingo from the smoking gun of whatever this new ‘thing’ was, I appreciated that it was becoming a huge part of our culture. Two and a half years later, I realize that girl wasn’t kidding. She was up all night, until every single insignificant reflection of a friend in a TV screen or car windshield was tagged and the photo was captioned. Maybe her feet fell asleep as well. Maybe it was her left arm, rendered useless as her right hand clenched her sweaty mouse and her trigger finger rested on its left button, poking and super-poking her way into the night, finding out what mixed drink she was by daybreak.

Around the time I first heard the words face and book used conjunctively, the Myspace craze was a dying one, and I suppose you could call it just a craze at that, as we never took it much more seriously than changing the songs on our profiles every so often. It was “a place for friends” to my buddies and I; we hadn’t yet categorized it into a social networking site because we knew nothing similar. That all seemed to change pretty soon, however. In a matter of months, we were all logging into a familiar minimalist, blue and white welcome page to find that we had just as many, if not more friends than we did on Myspace.

Despite being able to post an uncanny amount of pictures on your profile and circulate almost every single insignificant movement you made, Facebook seemed less personal than our formerly most frequented website. On Facebook, it was easier to create a network of friends, regardless if that was even a title that you’d give them in real life. Adding that girl in the back of your chemistry class you’ve never said a word to, soon became a social norm, and as long as you never poked her or left comments on any of her photos, order would be kept in your virtual life. It quickly became understood that if you were ever requested to be friends with someone who you didn’t know from a hole in the wall, there was about a nine-out-of-ten chance that they wouldn’t even acknowledge your going through the extra trouble of a few mouse clicks to add them to hundreds of people you hand picked to stalk your profile. The tables would turn soon enough though, and you would soon be ignoring as many people online as you’d wish weren’t ignoring you. My friends and I couldn’t decide if it was stranger than it was flippin’ sweet.

The thought of having yet another medium to find, or break up with a significant other over wasn’t quite able to coax all of us into creating an account at around the time that everyone was switching over from Myspace, however; some of us held off on signing up for Facebook accounts. Being the cultured teen that you were, your conformity was inevitable though; you eventually had to give in, in order to see for yourself that the formerly mentioned processes could actually become faster than you had imagined possible. An addition to Facebook, a chat feature that introduced the ability to instant message any of your hundreds of friends who were online, later pushed AIM and other messaging web-apps off the face of the Internet. Considering that you could now wall post, private message, video message, or instant message any buddies who signed up to endure the wrath of unethical doses of RSS feed coming at them at an average rate of three updates per minute, the need to leave Facebook to seek social interactions elsewhere on the net dwindled.
I have to admit that after ‘chat’ came out, I became addicted. I really enjoyed the fact that I could communicate with so many people, so quickly, and get away with lacking the personality a face-to-face, or even telephone conversation would require. All the while, I couldn’t justify why. If I hadn’t spoken to a friend all weekend long, it seemed much easier to check their profile than actually give them a ring and make an effort to see them in person. If I wanted to keep in touch with someone overseas, it seemed that leaving comments on their status updates was sufficient enough for me to let them know that I acknowledge their existence, though I’d never have the desire to drop them a private message or IM. I’d kept in touch with such people more often (through e-mail and phone), prior to us finding each other on Facebook, and considering what seemed like mutual feeling that was conveyed through our interactions between networks, I couldn’t help but wonder if we were falling out of touch because we just grew apart, or if our new social network partly caused it.

My realization of the superficiality that I’d hid behind as a Facebook user was not the only thing that factored into the eventual de-activation of my account. There was simply too much information on the site for me to handle, and I sadly transformed into the archetypal lurker. If I wanted to know for sure if the girl I’d been crushing on all year was dating a friend of mine, I’d check either of their profiles for changes in relationship status as often as I logged on. Despite their refusal to publically list their relationship, pictures of them together would constantly circulate on my feed, even after my de-friending both of them. When friends I’ve had for years on end started ducking my invitations to hang out because they were always ‘busy with college stuff,’ I was upset to see that their status updates of “Hookah tonight with insert friend’s name here!” didn’t coincide with their stated preoccupation. And of course it always warmed my soul to know that “insert friend is attending insert other friend’s birthday extravaganza!!!” while the event page clearly stated that the party was invite-only, and it seemed as if the host made an effort to invite everyone I was friendly with aside from myself.

I loved it for the information it brought me, hated it for the dissatisfaction that such knowledge brought to my life more often than not, and most importantly, felt trapped by it, as I couldn’t escape. Facebook was on my computer, on my phone, hell- I couldn’t help but stay updated through my iPod. Believe me when I say that I’m not trying to point fingers, and that I appreciate that I was completely at fault for my obsession, but I at least take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone; I’ve lost at least a handful and a half of friends to dependencies on Facebook to soak up the monotony of day to day life. It doesn’t seem that I can go out in public without such friend-addicts whipping out their touch-screen phones to check for notifications at least every twenty minutes or so. They get back to their dorm rooms at the end of the day and only then commence the hardcore, MacBook-fueled lurking they couldn’t solely complete on their mobile.
I wish I could explain why it grew on me as much as it did, but all I can say in retrospect is that I’m glad that I finally appreciated how debilitating it was for me to keep an account. I parted ways from my Facebook not too long ago, before having to explain to some of my friends that it wasn’t some kind of publicity stunt and that I wasn’t just doing it for attention.

(Facebook Logo) [IMAGE NOT SHOWN]

What truly fascinates me, is how strictly the image of a bubbled-lettered, lowercase now has the power to instill the same excitement in gossip-craving teenagers as the McDonald’s golden arches does in hungry children, longing for happy meals. If a glimpse of this icon is spotted in a corner of your web browser nowadays, people know what you’re up to. We all know you’re on Facebook, and I’m okay with our generation’s thinking and saying that, as it’s a pretty literal yet accurate definition of what happens after you type the letter ‘f’ into Mozilla Firefox and use the drop-down window to select your most-frequented website, as opposed to taking the time to type out all sixteen characters. I just wonder if the four girls in front of me at this very second, wasting perfectly good study or essay-writing space in the designated quiet zone of the library with their snickering and ‘Facebooking,’ would be offended if I used the term interchangeably with ‘promoting our culture’s de-socialization through the excessive use of a social network’.

Since my deactivation, when I meet new people who ask for my last name in hopes of adding me to their friend list, I get the usual “You don’t have a Facebook!? You should get one!” and we usually end up compromising by exchanging phone numbers. I’m glad it happens that way. I much rather talk to a fellow human being on the phone and hear their voice than hide behind a traditional or cell phone keyboard. It seems that in this day and age, communication technology is improving almost so that we can keep in touch with more people than we could have even imagined, all while cowering behind the shadow of impersonality.
Many of us seem like heroin addicts, huddled around iPhones and Blackberries in mall food courts, getting quick fixes of Facebook as often as we can. No, Facebook isn’t going to give us HIV through our warming spoons of picture comments and sharing needles of status updates and across the Internet, but are we really getting such a high from social networking to the point where it deserves to devour as much of our time as it does? Yes, you will undoubtedly immerse into ‘networks’ of people through maintaining a Facebook account, but are the two or so networks you belong to anything more than a set of crutches that help promote your social awkwardness? It makes me wonder; are our grandchildren going to be dumbfounded at films from the seventies and eighties, wondering why the protagonist is so hesitant to ask someone out on a date over the phone, or better yet, between class? Are we going to eventually stop calling people from our phones, as we’re afraid to squander our precious wireless minutes when we could waste twice as much time and lack twice the personality, accessing our beloved Facebook application?

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder is probably more than content with the direction that his creation is headed in, as he sculpted it from a tool for students to keep in touch with each other across campus, to one that connects people across the globe. Especially so now, seeing as that it’s making him millions upon millions of dollars, but that’s a whole other story. Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that in its mechanics, Facebook is an amazing website. It truly can be a lifesaver when it comes to planning events, contacting masses of people, and keeping in touch at a minimal cost with those who may have forsaken traditional e-mail accounts.

On the contrary, while Facebook may win its merit here and there, the shallowness of the communication that takes place throughout its networks logically overshadow its few, truly useful aspects. Facebook puts up a beautiful façade of being an amazing tool, utility, social network; whatever the heck you want to call it- that will help us stay in touch with everyone who we’ve ever accepted or requested conformation to be online friends with. In reality, while you may be checking out their photos in the back of your geology class, you just as well may be distancing yourself from them. At any rate, I can’t help but wonder; what is the significance of staying in touch with someone when your only means of communicating with them is strictly by ‘liking’ their status updates? Once again, this is not the summary of all social interactions that take place across Facebook, but even so, I can’t help but think the site has a fitting name; strictly reading the face of a book as opposed to its pages will eventually bring you as much satisfaction as communicating with people solely through a website medium.

Facelessbook - Assignment

ENC1101: Engaging Cultural Mediums

Paper #2 – Visual/Textual Interaction, (7–8 pp)
This paper asks you to critically analyze and interpret visual and textual aspects of media. You will pick a form of media that incorporates both aspects (i.e. movies, music videos, CD artwork and song, children’s books with illustrations, cultural icons, or movie/book comparisons). For this assignment, you should write from an objective point of view as found in most news and magazine articles. You should not just state the visual and textual elements, but you should analyze them together, leaving your audience with a new way of seeing the relationship between the visual and textual.

For Essay #2, you will build on the observation and analytic skills employed in Essay One with the objective of exploring connections between written and visual texts. In achieving this goal, you will focus on how elements from both visual and written texts serve to interpret, emphasize, complicate, or mask one another.

Think of your favorite magazine, for instance. Now imagine if it had no visuals in it whatsoever, no pictures or cartoons or ads. How different would your magazine be? The visuals that are included in your magazine serve a distinct purpose, and for this essay you will consider what that purpose is.
You will be required to analyze elements of the visual text like image, layout, color, design, and lighting. You will also consider qualities of the written text, such as voice, tone, audience, and style. Through a comparison of the two texts and how they work with and/or against each other, you will make a specific claim about the media's ideas, values, and overall message and support this argument with details obtained through close observation and analysis.

Your first step should be to select a text with visual representations. Your choices are basically endless. If you are a fan of comic books/graphic novels, you might consider how the images in Art Spiegelman’s Maus tell a story separate from that of the text, adding meaning to the relationship between father and son. Also significant is the choice to portray the characters as mice, which adds another layer of meaning to Spiegelman’s memoir. In analyzing a text like this you might consider elements of color, point of view, arrangement, movement, and style. Perhaps there is an illustrated storybook from your childhood that has always intrigued you, such as Green Eggs and Ham or Pat the Bunny. If this is the case, you could discuss the narrative and text alongside the book's images, looking again at the illustrator's use of things like color and style.

Here are some possible ways of approaching paper #2:
• Perhaps you could focus on one or more articles from magazines such as Newsweek or Time, examining the written texts and corresponding photos and illustrations. For example, you could look at the coverage of the war in Iraq or the upcoming primary election through the "lens” of writers and photojournalists. Or you might consider how ads in a magazine like Cosmopolitan typically complement what is being said in an article. It’s no coincidence that a shampoo ad would appear on the page next to an article about how to get great hair.
• Another possibility includes looking at CD song lyrics, liner notes and cover art. You might consider, for instance, how the cover art on Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antarctica supplements meaning for the lyrics.

• You might explore website text and graphics, observing sites such as college and university homepages and discussing things like mission statements and messages addressed to prospective students. You could then talk about the textual message in relation to corresponding graphics, layout, and design.

• Or you could consider how a particular movie or play deviates from its original screenplay (or perhaps from the book it was adapted from).

• Another option is using a cultural icon as the visual element of your paper. An icon is an image, symbol, or idea that has become commonplace in a society. Cultural icons might be thought of as people, pictures, or events that have a powerful influence on our thinking. Often writers think of themselves as "iconoclasts," which literally means to blow up icons or commonly held ideas. These writers cause us to see the world differently. All of the following are cultural icons: Seminoles, Bob Dylan, Meryl Streep, Hugh Heffner, Dr. Seuss, The Beatles, Alcoholics Anonymous, Woodstock, Pearl Harbor, Van Gogh, Shakespeare, and the Mona Lisa. Choose your own icon to write about (not necessarily from the above list). The idea is of this paper is to write informatively about a cultural icon. As a byproduct of learning and thinking about this icon, you should also be able to analyze it. Make a specific claim or claims about the icon’s ideas, values, and overall message. Support your claims as strongly as you can. In addition to writing about the icon, include a picture that helps readers understand the icon better. Don’t just throw in any picture; choose one that goes well with your focus. Consider how elements from both visual and written texts serve to interpret, emphasize, complicate, or mask one another. Some possible questions to consider:|

--Do I have a clear message, argument, or thesis? Do I need one?
--What role does this icon play in our culture?
--What effects does this icon have on the way we think?
--What kind of readers do you envision? What would they want to know?

***Include at least one primary source (the textual component). Feel free to also incorporate secondary sources; for example, the controversy surrounding media’s manipulation of how its viewers understand the Iraq war.

Helpful texts from OW to read for inspiration/invention and drafting (we’ll be reading most of these during this part of the semester).
• “Radiohead’s OK Computer” for textual analysis
• “Living the Virtual Life: A Second Life”
• “The Role of Audiences”
• “This, Too, is Research”
• “Self-Analysis of Style”
• NMHH on various tricky topics (thesis, writing paragraphs, editing vs. revising)

Facelessbook - Draft 1

Facelessbook- Draft 1

My foot slipped off the paper tray of my computer desk and bashed into the base of my rolling chair, probably harder than I have ever smacked an appendage into a piece of office furniture. I didn’t feel a thing. I’d always made a bad habit out of elevating and crossing my legs while I surf the net, so it wasn’t hard for me to believe that my feet had lost blood circulation and in turn, feeling, after remembering I had been sitting in front of a CRT monitor for the past three hours. What have I been doing on the computer for this incredible period of time though? Homework? Nope. Reading the news? Nah. Searching E-Bay for shit I don’t need? Not even that. I’ve been spending an unhealthy portion of a perfectly good Saturday afternoon lurking around “a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them,” ironically, all by myself. Oh yeah, and I did say lurking, and I’m not afraid or embarrassed to admit it.

Around that time, Myspace was a dying craze, but it was just “a place for friends” amongst my buddies; we didn’t yet have it categorized as a social networking website because we knew nothing similar. That all seemed to change pretty soon however. In a matter of months, it seemed we all were logging into a familiar minimalist, blue and white welcome page, to see that we had just as many, if not more friends than we did on Myspace. Despite being able to post an uncanny amount of pictures on your profile and circulate almost every single movement you made on the website, Facebook seemed less personal than our formerly most frequented website. On this new site, it was easier to create a ‘network’ of friends, regardless if that was even a title that you’d give them in real life. Adding that girl in the back of your chemistry class you’ve never said a word to, soon became a social norm, and as long as you never poked her or commented on any of her photos, the universe seemed to stay in order.

An addition to Facebook, a chat feature that introduced the ability to instant message any of your hundreds of friends who were online, later pushed AIM and other messaging web-apps off the face of the Internet. Considering that you could now wall post, private message, video message, or instant message any buddies who signed up to endure the wrath of unhealthy doses of RSS feed coming at them at an average rate of three updates per minute, the need to leave Facebook to seek social interactions elsewhere on the net dwindled.

I hate to admit it, but I became addicted. I liked the lack of personality and anonymity it promoted, though I couldn’t justify it. If I hadn’t spoken to a friend all weekend long, it seemed much easier to check their profile than actually give them a call and make an effort to see them in person. If I wanted to keep in touch with someone overseas, it seemed that leaving comments on their status updates was sufficient enough for me to let them know that I acknowledge their existence, though I’d never have the desire to drop them a private message or IM.

But see, my realization of the superficiality that I’d hid behind as a Facebook user was not the only thing that led to the eventual de-activation of my account though. There was just too much information on Facebook for me to handle, and like I mentioned earlier, I became an archetypal lurker. If I wanted to know for sure if the girl I’d been crushing on all year was dating a friend of mine, I’d check either of their profiles for changes in relationship status as often as I logged on. Despite their refusal to publically list their relationship, pictures of them together would constantly circulate on my feed, even after my de-friending both of them from my account. When friends I’ve had for years on end started ducking my invitations to hang out because they were always ‘busy with college stuff,’ I was upset to see that their status updates of ‘Hookah tonight with insert friend’s name here!” didn’t coincide with their stated preoccupation.

I loved it, hated it, but most importantly, I couldn’t escape it. It was on my computer, on my phone, hell- I could stay updated through my iPod! I know I was at fault for my obsession and I’m not at all trying to blame Mark Zuckerberg for consuming as much of my time as his website did, but I know I’m not alone. I wish I could explain why it grew on me as much as it did, but all I can say in retrospect is that I’m glad that I finally appreciated how socially unhealthy it was for me to keep an account. I parted ways from my Facebook not too long ago, before having to explain to some of my friends that it wasn’t some kind of publicity stunt and that I wasn’t just doing it for attention.

Nowadays, when I meet new people who ask for my last name in hopes of adding me to their network, I get the usual “You don’t have a Facebook!? You should get one!” and we usually end up compromising by exchanging phone numbers. I’m glad it happens. I much rather talk to a human being and hear their voice than hide behind a formal or cell phone keyboard. It seems that nowadays, communication technology is improving almost so that we can keep in touch with more people than we could have even imagined, but cower behind the shadow of personality.

Facebook puts up a beautiful façade of being an amazing tool that will help us stay in touch with everyone who we’ve ever accepted or requested conformation to be friends with, but what is the significance of staying in touch with someone when your only means of communicating with them is strictly by ‘liking’ their status updates? Of course, this is not the summary of all social interactions that take place across Facebook, but even so, I can’t help but think the site has a fitting name; strictly reading the face of a book as opposed to its pages will eventually bring you as much satisfaction as communicating with people solely through a website medium. Let’s quit taking pictures with the idea in mind of uploading them into public albums, stop updating our statuses and finally quell our dependency on interaction through Facebook!

Facelessbook - Draft 2

Facelessbook- Draft 2

I first heard of Facebook when I was going into my sophomore year of high school. I was at a party, when a girl who was taking pictures mentioned that she was “going to be up all night tagging,” and I had no idea what she was referencing. As far as I knew, for decades, the universally understood meaning of ‘tagging’ had been either spraying graffiti or gunning someone down in cold blood, though I wasn’t sure if I had any right to question the usage of such word seeing as I’m part of the generation that turned “bad” into a noun, and products like TiVo into verbs. I stood between the crossfire of looks of acknowledgement and head-noddings she received from her friends and other acquaintances surrounding her her, totally clueless, and couldn’t seem to spot anyone else in the room who shared my look of bewilderment.

“Tagging what?” I had to ask.

“Pics, on Facebook?” she asked, as if there was something up her ass.

And with that, I ventured into a modern day’s no-man’s land;

“What’s Facebook?”

With the death of 1920’s gangster lingo at the smoking gun of a website, I appreciated that this new ‘thing,’ was becoming a huge part of our culture. Two and a half years later, I realize that girl wasn’t kidding. She was up all night, until every single insignificant reflection of a friend in a TV screen or beer bottle was tagged and the photo was captioned. Maybe her feet fell asleep as well. Maybe it was her left arm, rendered useless as her right hand clenched her sweaty mouse and her trigger finger rested on its left button, poking and super-poking her way into the night, finding out what mixed drink she was by daybreak.

Around the time I first heard the words Face and book used conjunctively, the Myspace craze was a dying one, and I suppose you could call it just a craze at that. It was “a place for friends” to my buddies and I; we hadn’t yet categorized into a social networking site because we knew nothing similar. That all seemed to change pretty soon, however. In a matter of months, it seemed we all were logging into a familiar minimalist, blue and white welcome page to find that we had just as many, if not more friends than we did on Myspace. Despite being able to post an uncanny amount of pictures on your profile and circulate almost every single insignificant movement you made, Facebook seemed less personal than our formerly most frequented website. On Facebook, it was easier to create a ‘network’ of friends, regardless if that was even a title that you’d give them in real life. Adding that girl in the back of your chemistry class you’ve never said a word to, soon became a social norm, and as long as you never poked her or commented on any of her photos, order would be kept in your virtual life. It quickly became understood that if you were ever requested to be someone’s friend who you didn’t know from a hole in the wall, there was about a 9/10 chance that they wouldn’t even acknowledge your going through the extra trouble of a few mouse clicks to add them to hundreds of people you hand picked to stalk your profile.

I hate to admit it, but at that point, I became addicted. I liked the lack of personality and anonymity it promoted, though I couldn’t justify why. If I hadn’t spoken to a friend all weekend long, it seemed much easier to check their profile than actually give them a call and make an effort to see them in person. If I wanted to keep in touch with someone overseas, it seemed that leaving comments on their status updates was sufficient enough for me to let them know that I acknowledge their existence, though I’d never have the desire to drop them a private message or IM.

My realization of the superficiality that I’d hid behind as a Facebook user was not the only thing that led to the eventual de-activation of my account. There was just too much information on Facebook for me to handle, and like I mentioned earlier, I became the archetypal network lurker. If I wanted to know for sure if the girl I’d been crushing on all year was dating a friend of mine, I’d check either of their profiles for changes in relationship status as often as I logged on. Despite their refusal to publically list their relationship, pictures of them together would constantly circulate on my feed, even after my de-friending both of them. When friends I’ve had for years on end started ducking my invitations to hang out because they were always ‘busy with college stuff,’ I was upset to see that their status updates of “Hookah tonight with insert friend’s name here!” didn’t coincide with their stated preoccupation.

I loved it, hated it, but most importantly, I couldn’t escape it. It was on my computer, on my phone, hell- I could stay updated through my iPod! I know I was at fault for my obsession and I’m not at all trying to blame Mark Zuckerberg for consuming as much of my time as his website did, but I at least take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone; I’ve lost at least a handful and a half of friends to dependencies on Facebook. I wish I could explain why it grew on me as much as it did, but all I can say in retrospect is that I’m glad that I finally appreciated how unhealthy it was for me to keep an account. I parted ways from my Facebook not too long ago, before having to explain to some of my friends that it wasn’t some kind of publicity stunt and that I wasn’t just doing it for attention.

Nowadays, when I meet new people who ask for my last name in hopes of adding me to their network, I get the usual “You don’t have a Facebook!? You should get one!” and we usually end up compromising by exchanging phone numbers. I’m glad it happens that way though. I much rather talk to a human being and hear their voice than hide behind a formal or cell phone keyboard. It seems that nowadays, communication technology is improving almost so that we can keep in touch with more people than we could have even imagined, but cower behind the shadow of impersonality.

Facelessbook - Draft 3

Facelessbook- Draft 3

“Tagging what?” I had to ask.

“Pics, on Facebook?” she asked, as if there was something up her ass.

And with that, I ventured into a modern day’s no-man’s land;

“What’s Facebook?”

I loved it, hated it, but most importantly, I couldn’t escape it. It was on my computer, on my phone, hell- I could stay updated through my iPod! I know I was at fault for my obsession and I’m not at all trying to blame Mark Zuckerberg for consuming as much of my time as his website did, but I at least take comfort in the fact that I’m not alone; I’ve lost at least a handful and a half of friends to dependencies on Facebook. I wish I could explain why it grew on me as much as it did, but all I can say in retrospect is that I’m glad that I finally appreciated how unhealthy it was for me to keep an account. I parted ways from my Facebook not too long ago, before having to explain to some of my friends that it wasn’t some kind of publicity stunt and that I wasn’t just doing it for attention.

Nowadays, when I meet new people who ask for my last name in hopes of adding me to their network, I get the usual “You don’t have a Facebook!? You should get one!” and we usually end up compromising by exchanging phone numbers. I’m glad it happens that way though. I much rather talk to a human being and hear their voice than hide behind a formal or cell phone keyboard. It seems that nowadays, communication technology is improving almost so that we can keep in touch with more people than we could have even imagined, but cower behind the shadow of impersonality.