Tuesday, September 28, 2010

You Have 9 Mutual Friends

Some nights I just want to kill some goddamn time. It doesn't matter what it is that kills it, really. I go through periods of wanting to hang out with people, but I'm obviously not getting up and doing anything about it, so it can't be THAT important to me.

This is why Facebook is so amazingly suited to my personality. Without ever leaving the comfort of my room, I can "interact" with my "friends" and feel connected. I don't see anything wrong with this. It's what I've always wanted. Everything is on my terms. I choose the music, the time, whether or not to wear pants, etc. When I'm done, I don't have to say goodbye to anyone. But it doesn't just work in my favor. We all win.

People that are annoying or boring in real life become interesting, because you're not pre-occupied with the horrible REALNESS they confront you with. I'm not talking about the kind of "real" that makes people seem grounded or honest, but the kind of "real" that makes people want to read cheap paperbacks with dragons on the cover. These are people I can already imagine as bored 40-something parents even though they're 19; they get to be vital participants in the Facebook party, too. It also works well with people who may come across as dynamic in real life (although these people fall into the "annoying" category more often than not), because they're reduced to a small square photo and a few words on a screen. It levels the playing field. We all occupy the same meaningless space in the ether, just zeros and ones.

While walking around campus today, I noticed how hard it would be to approach a random person if I ever DID feel like talking to someone new. Almost everybody has some form of MP3 player these days, and if they're not chugging along to music, they're walking and talking on their cell phones or texting. We all get to immerse ourselves in our own stupid lives, which may or may not be the greatest tragedy of personal technology.

Facebook is now the best way to meet someone. You aren't imposing on their personal bubble by going up and interrupting their music/conversation/social networking. It's a different path to their personality. You're casting your stone into their self-absorbed creation of themselves via Facebook. You're becoming another agent in their active self-worship. And because of that, they share their thoughts and downtown bar photos with you, and you get to "know" this person's construct of themselves. When you think about it, this is way deeper than the usual first date material. It's akin to asking a girl how she defines herself vis a vis how other people perceive her socially constructed identity while waiting for bad Italian food at the Olive Garden.

I'm guilty of playing the Facebook game as much as the next person. I see people at shows, or they see me, and we could talk but we don't. Fast forward a few hours, and there it is:

You Have 1 New Friend Request

I add him/her and maybe post something on their wall, "Like" a comment or two, and if we ever see each other in real life again, we usually CONTINUE to pass up opportunities for face-to-face communication. In the context of a real meeting between two new friends, the subsequent cold shoulder would almost certainly come across as an insult. But not with Facebook. Facebook lets me accumulate friends while shrinking the circle of real people I want to talk to for more than 30 seconds. And these people never get to know anything about me that I don't offer them.

This is amazing! Why wasn't this around when I was in high school? I wasted so much time conversing with someone who'd lent me a pencil the week before or sat next to me on a bus because of this need to fill the silence. To think I actually once tapped a girl on the shoulder to ask her what her name was. Those days are over, my friends. We live in the greatest age for the antisocial, the golden era of the misanthrope. So let's kill time together, alone.