I like Facebook. It’s an audience for me. I wonder if the people realise that there’s an art to those statuses I put out for them to giggle at? Some, of course are thought up on the spot and typed in before I have a chance to think of the consequences. But others, others are dreamt up while I’m in that half asleep half awake consciousness. Typed into my phone so I remember it for the morning while I have one eye closed and the other slightly opened. ‘That’s a funny one, I’ll put that as a status tomorrow’. But why tomorrow? Why not type it into Facebook now on my Blackberry?
I’ve been on my self imposed exile from Facebook for just over a week now. I felt the time had come to give myself a break from having to look at the uninspiring lives of others. Their real actual lives. Their real actual lives that they like to write about so that all their ‘friends’, aka people they just know, or have heard of once can see it.
Surely Facebook is a platform to entertain others with funny stories and inspire each other to live an adventurous life full of love and laughter. It’s not for you to write how bored you are every two seconds. The people don’t want to know about how you’re feeling because your boyfriend dumped you. Nobody cares who you’re with and that you’re in KFC eating some chicken. Think to yourself, before you press Enter. ‘If I saw a status, about someone I know, telling me, that they’re in KFC, with someone else that I don’t know, eating chicken, would I care?’.
There’s a knack to a great Facebook status. It’s like product placement. Getting to your target audience at the right time. I decided to bring my Facebook career to an end with a memory that my real actual friends that I know, could relate to and talk about. It was a present to them, just so they know I haven’t forgotten them.
What they don’t know is, a status like that can’t be just put out at any old time. It has to be considered, and it was. It was a Sunday, a historical poor day to get any interest in Facebook statuses. This particular status was thought up the night before. However, I am not naïve enough to put it out without careful measurement of possible events that could unfold and over shadow my final bow. It’s not instinct though. It’s just I know that this particular Sunday, Arsenal were playing Birmingham in the Carling Cup Final.
A last minute winner for Birmingham sent Facebook mad with statuses upon statuses of heckles for Arsenal fans. As I sat down eagerly in preparation for my final act as a Facebook comedian. Finger hovering over the Enter key waiting for the exact moment to gain maximum exposure. When all the football dust had settled and all the smoke from the fans had cleared, that was my time. 15 ‘likes’ and 26 comments. A new record for a Sunday status. You don’t get better figures than that unless you’re a really fit girl that everyone fancies and you do some boring status about how you’ve just passed your driving test. Yawn.
I could sit here all day and moan about how Facebook hurts people. The easy access into people’s lives aka Facebook Stalking aka Facebook Perving. I know what you’re thinking ‘Don’t be so nosey’. It’s there though isn’t it, in your face. You know bla bla has shagged bla bla before they’ve even finished because somebody else has written about it.
I don’t want Facebook to define me. I can’t say to people, ’look, what you see on there isn’t me, it’s just writing’. I want to say that to them. I want to know, that they realise that I’m just tapping my fingers on to letters and they appear on the screen. It’s not actually a person. Of course there is those people who put every single detail of their real life onto social-networking sites. I sometimes wonder if they actually understand that people can see it. Let’s leave the serious business for behind close doors. Let’s not reveal our hearts to people we barely know. Don’t belittle the death of someone you love, by putting out ‘R.I.P.’ statuses. Things like that are seriously personal. Why would you want to reveal it to all these random people that don’t really care. Facebook is nothing. It’s not a place to mourn. It’s not a sanctuary for sadness and your private counsellor. It’s not a place to cry because a girl doesn’t like you. People have to realise that their actions on Facebook are moulding their personality in the eyes of people who can see. I am not the man I am on Facebook. But it has become too easy just to write anything you want. Unintentionally giving people the idea that they know you.
I probably will return to Facebook. I enjoy annoying people on it too much. I’m sure it won’t be long before I miss watching people have mental breakdowns through statuses and average looking girls making copious amounts of albums, filled with pictures they’ve taken of themselves in the mirror. It says a lot for today’s world though that when I returned from my week longs absence from Twitter, I was flooded with tweets & messages asking me where I had been. ‘Oh maybe, living a life …?’.
Of course I am grateful for them noticing that I had not been giving my usual opinions on every TV show that exists, but it’s still strange, still not real to me. You noticed I was gone, as soon as I return?
These social-networking relationships are not real. Even the one’s who you consider to be your friends, they still don’t have any spine to them. Some of the people I talk to most, I haven’t seen more than ten times in real life. I talk to them everyday, and I consider them my friends, but I haven’t been in their company. I’ve been to see the doctor, more times then I’ve seen them.
It’s strange because talking over a computer seems to have become the norm. Nobody ever goes out anymore to build friendships with new people. It’s always, talk over Facebook, then might see you down the pub when we’re drunk.
I’ve been off Facebook and Twitter for a week! When I get back on it, then people return to normal and start talking to me. Because that’s what our relationship has become. Talking over a computer, and I don’t want any relationships like that. As soon as I forget what your voice sounds like, that’s when you know, we’re not really friends. If I was not at school for a day let alone a week, I would have been flooded with texts and phone calls to see where I was. People wouldn’t of waited for me to come back to school to find out where I’ve been. Yet people wait until I come back onto Facebook or Twitter to see where I’ve been?
I think it’s at school though that the best and strongest relationships are built. We’re talking five days a week for five years you spend time in the company of these people. When I was at school, I had some mates who I saw in class, then we went out on the Saturday and then played football on the Sunday. That’s being in their company everyday for five years. Yet I have people who I care about more than my school mates now and I have seen them less than ten times in my whole life. Why? Because we type words onto Facebook chat? It’s pathetic and it’s nowhere near real. I can walk into any room, and it wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t seen my school friends for a million years they would always talk to me like they always have and it would be like I had never been away. I’ve noticed that they all talk to me completely differently to how any of my other friends do. Like in our heads we’re thinking, I actually know this person. I hardly ever see them now, but you can’t take away the times we had together. You can’t beat the solid foundation that our relationships are built on. You can’t beat getting to know someone, everyday in a close environment.
That’s why you can never out friend your new friends friends. They may not always like them more than you, but they’ll always have time on you. They’ll always be able to reminisce about childhood events. I couldn’t sit down with my school mates and talk about anything to do with the last few years. But we will always have nostalgia. Which cannot be beaten. Just don’t even bother trying to compete with time.
You can spend half your life, nattering with someone on Facebook thinking you know them. Then see one of their statues that everyone ‘likes’, but you can’t because you don’t understand it. You don’t understand it because you’re not actually part of their real life. You’re not there when the things that matter are happening. You may want to be, and that’s nice. But you’re not. Read the wall-to-walls, read the photo comments, try to understand, and join the dots up with your imagination. Do what you want. It’s never going to be real.
P.s. Don’t think I don’t realise that you’re reading this blog, and thinking that you now know who I am. You don’t. I don’t give a shit about anything I've just written. I don't care about Facebook or anything to do with what people write and post on it. Once again this is just me, taping the keys on my laptop. You can’t trust anything can you?
Ever thought the Reebok sign looks like the Facebook sign?
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