I Quit Facebook, Cold TurkeyI quit Facebook, cold turkey. You want to know the truth? It had just gotten too bizarre: Pictures of older friends holding their newborn children popping up alongside shots of younger friends mud wrestling and downing beers; marriage announcements a few lines below news of high school breakups; parents of classmates that caught us drinking or drove us to birthday parties as 10-year-olds now sending requests for digital friendship — too much, just too much. Is there no order left? I recall earlier days of the 'book, as I came to call it, when there was still something slightly bizarre about clicking through digital photo albums. There was a time not too long ago when photo albums were gingerly flipped through in family rooms: "May I look at your album?" one was expected to delicately ask. Now, people pound through Facebook albums like mothers tear through tabloids in the checkout line: "She got fat — click — these kids are losers — click — he's a tool — click — she's slammin'." At the outset, the website was Harvard-based. It then expanded to fellow Ivy's, then on to some of the more selective state schools, and then to some of the smaller private schools. Kids from small towns like mine, I remember, were likely to friend anyone from their high school — regardless if they had ever spoken — just to bolster "friend" totals. There was space to upload exactly one picture, no albums for sure, and room to list the most basic items: political leanings, gender, tastes in music and film, an e-mail address, and a phone number perhaps. Today's Facebook has grown into an entirely different beast. It took a quick, rather violent turn when it converted — through several half-steps — from a college students' club to a full-scale social networking site. The MySpace-ing of Facebook, we might call it. The data-crunching Facebook processors are no longer content to merely post the information we provide; they now churn and broadcast information to all acquaintances.
Dissenters will argue that one has complete control over what goes up and the extent to which personal information is shared. This, while somewhat true, doesn't unsettle the reality that pictures often go up without a subject knowing about them, and that there are few ways to politely evade a request for friendship. Facebook has provided an incredible public good: It's made it possible to track down lost acquaintances, friends and co-workers that many of us thought we might never speak with again. But it has also brought out the worst in many of us. Can't we unhitch the communicative tool from the voyeuristic, addictive beast that Facebook has become? In a perfect world, I'd propose the partitioning of the website: A high school version, a college 'book, and a real world edition. The most troubling piece of the equation for me, and for many friends, is the collision of worlds. Suddenly family, coworkers, friends, and business acquaintances are all bearing down at once, expecting us to show a single face. In reality, many of us lead somewhat partitioned lives and don't necessarily want subsections cross-referencing one another. But in the meantime, I'm 48 days Facebook free and not planning a return. Certainly not without employing an alias at least. Brian Till, one of the nation's youngest syndicated columnists, is a research fellow for the New America Foundation, a think tank in Washington. He can be contacted at till@newamerica.net. To find out more about the author and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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