Tuesday night Ari and Peter cornered me on my persistence to not participate in/with ‘the Facebook.’ There are lots of reasons I should (re-)activate: Kimi is abroad and while I think about her every day I don’t have a means of easily communicating this w/out FB; I could share ‘links’ to songs, etc with people I don’t see daily (Clare, Sara, Adam, et al); and, well, it’s fun. You get to relive all the parts of your life fortunate enough to be filmed/photographed, sort of perform yourself, (‘Engram likes FLEETWOOD MAC,’ or ‘You added ‘JEAN-LUC GODARD’ to your interests) and keep tabs for ‘the LOLZ’ on old friends, lovers, etc etc.
I hate all of this. With an active, lively, daily sort of rage. And I struggle, honestly, with people who ‘facebook’ (because, sadly, it is its own fucking verb now), because I have to exert all kinds of energy in enjoying their company in spite of their participation with a ‘social network,’ even, as so many people say in defense of their participation with the system, they do it ‘for the irony’ or to ‘keep in touch with someone.’
I’m wrong in this—I know. But there’s the raw fact: I’d rather anyone watch avidly whatever that Kardashian show is non-ironically, wholly enthusiastically than participate with Facebook. (Again, this is a personal problem, and I’m working to overcome it, or be more understanding, in much the same way I’m trying to not immediately disenjoy people with a particular personality strain—types of people who take the thoughts/words of others as a perpetual springboard for talking about themselves, or taking the problems of others (“I have three tests this week;” “My uncle died”) as a means of not successfully empathizing (“Oh, I had three tests last week and a paper and I’m still here;” or “Yeah, you’ll feel better in six months. I did when my pet dog died, who I loved like an uncle, or even a grandmother”). An act of silent, well-attentive listening can never ever be overemphasized.) (Admittedly, I think a conscious use of the FB to participate Ellisonianly in a power structure as a means of disrupting it is praiseworthy but, in all seriousness, who the fuck does that? Or, more pressingly, where are they?)
This rant-strain brings me to the act of ‘liking’ something—a notion on which words have already and more convincingly been spoken by people smarter than me, like J. Franzen. (But I’m trying to be articulate now about what I think, and even though I’ll look on this post with disdain later it’s important to remember: conversation is healthy.) I ‘like’ things on Tumblr to often remember them; to return to the content of the liked post nightly, before bed, as a means of revisiting particular poems or quotes or photographs. Not to elevate Tumblr over the FB, but this system of ‘liking’ allows my participation—I can return to the ‘liked’ object repeatedly, each time with the fresh weight of new experience, and in the process make myself and/through the ‘liked’ object-turned-subject newly different. There are some Kay Ryan poems, and some Walton Ford paintings, and, more recently, a Henry Miller quote on page 8 of my blog, that I could pull up to illustrate this point. I can also ‘re-blog’ with contributions—maybe, if relevant, inserting myself into some kind of dialogue—or keep the content tucked privately, like a memento tucked into the spine of what is now a 21st century scrapbook.
I turn now to Facebook to ask it: how does ‘liking’ involve, or renew, my social participation? You post a picture; I ‘like it; the world spins on, you knowing I’ve exercised within the limits of a system my approval of your picture, which you posted (presumably) to be seen, so you’re validated, and I become some type of Validator, and maybe on some future morning-after I am photographed at my own party you’ll ‘like’ my photograph too and I become validated. Somewhere in here should be a real sense of solidarity, but too often, there’s not, and all that happens is I remind an intangible universe: “Look at me! I’m here, I promise, and for proof I have opinions! I ‘like’ something, my thumb is raised and, if provocative enough, I’ll tell you with a wordy comment why my thumb is up!”
In an echo of my earlier comments on a kind of conversational ‘non-empathy,’ what is to be gained from inserting ourselves into the experiences of others? Seriously, I want to know if I’m missing out of any positive feelings, because I sure-as-shit could use some right now. It’s not as if the act of self-insertion is new (people have been conversing for centuries, after all); but why the need for a new social system that exacerbates that kind of hollowed interactivity? Of what is our need, our continued return to things we ‘like,’ indexical? Doesn’t the landscape of Facebook shift strongly—and rapidly—enough to create the ontological absences its component aspects attempt to cover-up?
It’s not new: we’re lonely. Everyone hurts, everyone wants to not hurt, and the most common means of arriving at that non-hurting comes from expelling, expelling, expelling all the badness. But there’s something inherently unhealthy in a method of connecting, ‘LIKING,’ that not only refuses but disallows to complicate the discourse of complicatedly being a living person to the pressing of a button and, by doing so, essentializing the shared need of others to not-hurt down to an axis of ‘Like,’ or, by direct assosication, ‘Not-Like.’ Polemics like this create, enable and perpetuate a cycle of ‘spectating’ rather than ‘participating.’
I envision a future where silence has its own worthy place in conversation, not as a preamble to speech, but as its own entity, an enacted gesture that surrenders the notion of being ‘a shape’ as a means of expressing its own shape.
Oh my stars. PREACH. It is so very refreshing and comforting to know that I am not the only one who feels this way. In the last few months, I have felt my strong sentiments regarding facebook waning because of pressing questions from my peers as well as the general feeling of exclusion and, “It would just be so convenient if…”
This is exactly what I could not have said myself. Thank you. I wish everyone would take a moment to consider what, if any, meaning is found in their facebook activity. Does it enhance your life positively in any way? (doubtful)
Please believe me when I say you are better off without it.
