I have noticed recently that, particularly after I have been on Facebook, I start to think in 'status updates'. Sasha is preparing herself a yummy salad and taking it easy. Sasha is spending the day at the beach. Sasha is thinking about her wonderful boyfriend. The fact that I hardly post these things is irrelevant. The constant eye of my Facebook friends is still there. The frightening thing about this is that I am probably not the only person thinking this way. Assuming I'm not, this means that mediums such as (but not limited to) Facebook are already showing the profound impact that they have on our generation's personal experiences.
It would be redundant to call those who constantly update their 'status' simply 'indulgent'. That would be too obvious a critique. Similarly, it would be superficial to call these status updates 'dumb' or 'boring'--since Facebook users are continually intrigued by them (myself included of course) that is clearly not the case. What I am more interested is the influence that the use of the 'status update' has the potential to affect on one's personal experiences. If I am already noting that certain things I do seem 'status-update-worthy', at what point are our experiences manipulated into only 'status-update-worthy' events? Or perhaps more fundamentally, how will our lives change once we live them only to inform the public about them?
As soon as an experience becomes a Facebook 'status update', it is more legitimized as an event simply by the sheer fact of being published. What my worry is is if we went through our days thinking about which of our experiences would make witty 'status updates', not only would be detaching ourselves from the present moment (much in the way that taking photos at every instant while travelling does), but it runs the risk of giving our mass of Facebook friends, the world of impressions and coolness, the authority to assign value to our experiences. The mundane details of our lives need not be validated by being announced to everyone we may have ever met, and then have one of those people comment on them or claim to 'Like' them. The mundane details are valid in themselves. And we should strive to appreciate them as they are, instead of trying to glamourize them with our one universal tool of fame.
Of course the ultimate irony of the too-much-information status update is how impersonal it actually is. We might let everyone know that right now we are sad because we got in a fight with our parents, but since everyone can read that information, the intimacy of that feeling of ours is instantly diffused. Anything we are going to let 1,000 of our friends see all at the same time we are going to make sure will make us sound cool. Facebook's publicity is completely at ends with intimacy for this reason. But since we know before posting something that everyone can read it, it is strangely this impersonal of our personal that we crave. The very commodity of our lives, cropped and glossed and ready to advertise to the masses. And of course, as with everything online, anything published has little longevity. An hour later we might be telling everyone how good of a movie Where the Wild Things Are was. The medium of the Facebook 'status update' actually succeeds in dilluting our own feelings.
In our society it is often difficult to be connected to others. Everyone listening to iPods on the bus. Not knowing who your neighbours are. Having friends live in different parts of the world. Thinking that you'll be considered weird if you strike up a conversation with the person waiting behind you in line at the grocery store. But inventions like the 'status update' only succeed in distancing us further. They allow us to voyeuristically find out information about the life of another without having to engage with the person ourselves. They make us believe that everyone else is living a more interesting life than we are (largely because we forget that every person, like ourselves, filters out inappropriate/uncool information when they post something on Facebook), invoking jealousy, pride, and resentment. They encourage us to edit down the important moments in our lives into bite-sized quips.
Of course, letting everyone know what you ate for dinner seems pretty harmless. And of course, I still have a Facebook profile, and it is probable that I will use the 'status update' feature sometime again in the future. But as Marx said, in capitalism, all that is holy becomes profane. And Facebook, as a capitalist enterprise that turns our personal experience public, that is exactly what I am worried will happen.
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