I joined facebook in September in an act of submission to peer pressure. Or, say, to please those friends who were begging me to join in and help boost their popularity. Also, I signed up to see what all the fuss was about.
Here is an account of my experience with facebook and the reasons why I believe it is useless or, to put it elegantly, it sucks:
Stage 1: I have been a pretty passive user for a few months.
Stage 2: this is when I got sucked into the whole social networking thing. I was thrilled with facebook and started looking for connections with friends and old acquaintances, all those friends who moved to remote places, people I met at a bus stop 15 years ago, the cashier at my local grocery store in Rome, all past co-workers I couldn't stand... Most people say facebook is great to connect with friends. From my standpoint, facebook was a Ghandian experience, a training ground for practicing tolerance; I came across a bunch of people I loathe, at first I wanted to puke, then I thought 'yeah, why not? let's add this son of a b---h to my friends list'. After all, everyone knows that facebook friends are not real friends, and you teach yourself how to neutralize negative vibes.
Stage 3: when the pests came into the picture. Here are the party poopers: old friends and acquaintances I would never want to be reconnected with. If I wanted to keep in touch with them, I wouldn't have 'lost touch' with them. So simple.
Stage 4: when you stop to think about it and the social scientist in you starts asking questions such as 'isn't this just a narcissist's cyber-playground?' All these guys sharing their dumbest thoughts with 15 million users. Hey, look at me 'Jack is currently reading a book'! Amazing! Thank you for letting me know, seriously! Worst, those who suffer from publicity/privacy schizophrenia. I mean, what am I supposed to do with 'Jane is happy because of what she is going to do tomorrow'??? You either tell me the whole story or just shut up.
They call it social network but the truth is, facebook is about cheap interaction. Social relations means communicating and engaging in a dialogue. There is no dialogue on facebook because there is no content. People look like 5 year old kids picking their nose. They can't articulate a thought that goes beyond the 'Jane is currently reading a book' level of complexity, and social interaction is ultimately reduced to taking quizzes, playing games, sending zombie invitations and poking, with the sole purpose of telling the world what quizz you took, game you played, whom you poked. It's not actual communication, but pieces of digital stammering spammed to hundreds of 'friends'.
Stage 5: when you want to abide by the principle of intellectual honesty to come to a fair judgment by looking at all aspects of the problem. My starting point was: if facebook is inspired by the six degrees of separation and interconnectedness theories, then I can exploit the network's full potential so as to develop some exciting connections. I searched for Jonathan Franzen and Milan Kundera. Guess what? They're on facebook. It seemed too good to be true. In fact, next thing I know, you cannot add them to your friends' list but you can join their fan club. Hm, what a nine day wonder! So, basically, the added value of facebook's gigantic chain of connections is that I can get linked to Jenny Jones from Auburn, Iowa.
Stage 6: I’m strongly considering killing my facebook account. I'm choosing a date. I thought of March 22, marking the anniversary of Sheik Yassin's death in an Israeli helicopter missile strike on his car. But I'm not sure I can stay with facebook for another thirteen months. August 6th is also a possibility: the day the Prefect's office of Londrina, Brazil, authorized the extermination of 50 thousand pigeons.
Fear thou the Londrina judgment day, my facebook!
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