Facebook is another method of voyerism, especially for those who do not want to identify the habit. We try and create all these limitations: choosing who can see our walls, photo albums, profile details yet we want to follow those very same things in other peoples facebook lives. I think if there was an option for a live feed via webcam people would stop working, going to bathrooom without their laptops in fear of missing what other people are doing.
It seems it is our solution to boredom, to loneliness, to keeping up with the Joneses.
We indulge in, we tempt people with teasers as statuses, we provide almost erotic glimpses into our otherwise dreary lives. Even those who follow up their FB albums with real life drama seem to be hiding from the actual vaccum in their lives. Trite, cliched words, but it seems so true as daily people use facebook to create more relationships, to pretend that their life is worth your living.
Isolation is lathered and slathered with catchy nicknames, cute messages on others Walls and most of all...following the lives of others through the news stream that passes through the homepage.
It seems that the internet wants to provide an alternative to the problem it created. Sort of like mass capitalistic strategy: create a problem and then sell the solution. I love the internet, make no mistake. It is my gateway to knowledge in a way that nothing else can replace. Yet. It created this ringing hollow in everyone's lives by taking away the actual time spent with actual people doing actual things. So the fix was virtual time, virtual people and virtual activities.
Like my writing this blog.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
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