Mark Zuckerberg be Damned
Bill Cotter
Associate Editor
At first, it seemed innocent.
I could post on somebody’s “wall.” I could
be “friends” again with kids I remembered from my
first grade class in Seattle. I could post adorable pictures
of my dog and my family and my friends. I could pretend like
people actually cared that “Bill is gonna take a nap” or “Bill
is making a peanut butter and fluff sandwich.”
And it was addicting. Why start that math assignment when I
could procrastinate by Facebook "stalking" all my friends? After
all, maybe [insert attractive girl here] was "stalking" me, too!
It’s a completely new mentality, the inevitable result
of all those crazy advances we’ve made in the Internet
generation. And it extends far beyond the reaches of Facebook.
Just the other day, I had a conversation with a friend in the
Academy library—except it wasn’t really a conversation,
because he kept looking down every two seconds to check his phone.
I won’t hide it; I’m just as guilty. Like Facebook
or AIM, we text each other because we like attention, we crave
attention, and in this OCD, multi-tasking era, the ways to seek
and to give attention are all the more convenient.
But to what end? As we gain convenience and become more streamlined,
the whole process gets frustratingly impersonal. Its completely
possible for someone to feel connected to a “friend” without
ever actually meeting face to face. That’s the whole concept
behind eHarmony, and it’s quickly becoming the whole concept
behind the life of the American teenager.
Like the drug dealer or the pimp, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
wants us to keep on coming back for more. He wants us to stay
connected, to continue to nurture these impersonal ties. I deleted
my Facebook a little while ago, to stop the feeling that I was
wasting away my life. But you know what? It’s virtually
impossible to fully delete a Facebook account. Instead, you can “deactivate
it.” If, at any point, you decide to return - as I have
guiltily done once - then Facebook is more than happy to restore
everything. It scares me.
So maybe it’s not 1984. Maybe the world is changing, and
I should change with it. Maybe we are writing new definitions
for the term “meaningful communication” and “waste
of time.” But, call me old-fashioned, there’s still
a part of me that wishes the world stopped at Windows 98 and
I never knew about Digg or Twitter.
Oh God, don’t get me started on Twitter.
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