The Facebook Problem

The correct title of this should be "My Facebook Problem" but I am so damned lazy I'm not going to bother to change it. Here's my Facebook (FB from now on) problem:

I limit the number of "friends" I have on FB to a manageable number (typically around 300). I don't accept people I don't know fairly well because I post some bizarre shit there. My favourite "friends" (in quotations denotes someone I'm connected to on FB, out of quotes and it's the common usage) are the ones with boring jobs or very demanding educations who, as a result, just post interesting things they find killing time on the internet. But, because of my education and the career I would have (if I had a job) and because of the circumstances of my education (starting 10 years later than most of my peers) my "friends" are typically young, highly educated, motivated, and (reasonably) well-paid. As a result there is no time when at least a dozen of them aren't going somewhere or doing something interesting, something FB worthy.

People only put things on FB that show their lives in the best possible light. Most people anyway. I use it as a collator for weird shit I find other places on the internet. I don't remember the last time I posted a picture of myself doing something interesting. I guess I am just in the last generation who don't conceive of their lives as fodder for the internet. My qualifications are sullied by things like this blog but there are substantial differences between a blog like this and FB. FB simulates immediacy (as do Instagram, Twitter, and the dozen other apps I don't bother with). The picture gets snapped with a cell phone, geo-tagged, and posted. Whereas this blog is subject to layers upon layers of mediation. It is not a simulacrum of reality. It is my own (deeply mediated) take on certain aspects of my own life. My friends do not appear in it. You cannot tell what I look like (that picture might not be me, it is me but if I'm lying you have no way of telling). And I don't write these posts while skydiving, hanging out in the park with my extremely attractive friends, going to parties with famous people, or touring the cities of Europe. I write them in my apartment. Alone. That is not something I'm going to post a picture of on FB - even if I could stretch my arm far enough behind my head to take a selfie.

I've written previously about the FB effect - or what would more properly be called the Instagram / Twitter phenomenon - wherein everything in one's life is valuable only insofar as it contributes to the creation or maintenance of a digital persona. But what that theory misses is the people leading (or being lead through) those lives remain real people - people I know. And at this moment, several of them are in Europe (actually dozens because it's September and that means the yearly migration to Rome is underway), two are in L.A., one is playing (or just getting ready to play) a concert in B.C. and so on. The way FB (and all social media) both inherently glamorize and are intentionally used to glamorize people's lives is added to the combinatory mathematics of the number of friends you have and that makes FB (and all social media) enormously depressing if you, like me, lead a very quiet life.

All of this is territory covered by others before me. If I have anything to add that is unique to my circumstance it is this - because I pursued a design education a lot of my friends turned out to be professional photographers (and those that retain their amateur status are still really fucking good). They are able to make the simplest and stupidest things look glamorous as fuck. A picture of a group of people crowding around to look at a picture (so trite and hack-kneed it hurts to write a description of it) is so well done it inspires instant envy.

Actually, one thing I haven't read is a serious attempt to understand why so many people are trying so fucking hard to produce envy in their "friends". And I obviously don't mean the super-rich here. The quality that makes something FB-worthy is that it will produce envy. Whether it's envy for an adventurous life, envy of an achingly hip occasion, or envy of a talent, ability, or skill. People's online personas have the primary goal of inducing envy in others. Which strikes me as both completely human and incredibly strange because I'm friends with some very nice people (don't get me wrong a lot of my friends are assholes and that's why I love them but) and these nice people will go out of their way in an actual "meat-verse" encounter not to produce envy, not to show off, not to brag or even call attention to themselves. I mean, fuck, I'm Canadian. That isn't what we do. Unless we're talking hockey or online personas. I would like to know what that desire, to which social media caters so precisely, means, or might be taken to mean. If I thought about it for a while I could probably figure it out... but I'm going to go back to reading about the Punic Wars instead.