Facebook: a social network experiment

I am a willing victim of Facebook. Maybe an addict as well. I am someone who wants to know everything about everyone and tell everyone a lot. Either that's vanity or being a people's person. I don't know. But that's how it is. And this happened slowly. I got my life converted to a Facebook script. It became a live journal of what you did and where you went. It was also a way to share what you like, tell how you feel and show who you are. Weird is that it was not for lack of real living people around me, it was more of 'despite them' or at the cost of redundancy. What changed was that instead of telling what happened, everyone is already on the same page when you meet them and the time that conversations fill gets filled with real conversations a bit and rest with other discussions about people we are aware of but don't know.

 

It did feed the need to know. People from your past who you are not in touch with are an open book. There are people I see coming and pretend to have not noticed and walk by, they doing the same in all probability, are also on Facebook. I am thinking why this happened and when and how a decade passed and evolved the human species tremendously.

 

I begin by thinking, rather challenging the concept of need to know and need to tell. There are people like me who have more than half of the life spilled on their timelines, acting as a celebrity-boasting of their personal appearances and 'how well spent the day was' while their are silent observers who quietly watch the game with no need to exhibit much emotions at any of the great 'useless' information they got. Either way it speaks volumes about people. As I said, by my personal experience, it is not necessarily due to lack of actual social life, it is despite that. Or we have become too advanced, or lazy to do things old-fashioned way, hence we have embraced the channel which keeps people up-to-date with everything automatically.

 

So here is what happens. I wake up and pick my phone to see how long has been that I switched off my alarm and then jump to blue 'F' word to see how long has it been that world changed from last I saw it. I am not expecting a massive threat to mother earth or anything, its just that I am used to seeing what Mr. X thought of last night's football match, why did our moron captain not declare the inning, who went to fun parties, who just put cute baby/cat pics and how someone is listening to the new song in loop while Miley Cyrus is on way to rehab and Jolie adopted another kid.

 

There are feeds... Your kind of people are who have seen the latest trending video/ article/ news so you can discuss it with them assuming they already have seen it and have an opinion ready for discussion. FB is like my secretary reading out what happened to the world while I snoozed and what is lined up for today. The definition of God just changed from someone who can do everything to someone who knows everything.

 

So ya, here is what happened, not that its a life changing thing, or even a big deal for that matter, but I deactivated my account. In case if that interests, when I logged into it for 34th time in the day, (going by my 17th waking hour and checking it at least twice in an hour...loosely speaking it will be more...) I had no such intention. Like most of other things, in a span of less then a minute, I was clicking on deactivate account. I got the urge, the kind that tells you that this is what you should rightfully do, even if it feels otherwise. Drastic decisions are best made in jiffy. But only when you have the tried and tested wisdom of being able to differentiate between impulse and strong sense of rightness. I should take this topic separately...

 

The urge was not at all triggered by senselessness of the whole FB concept. I am the last person to say or feel that; it was more out of the kick of experiment and also to check my addiction, if I had one. I am someone who would get kick in checking if my routine is something I can live without or not. Makes me feel stronger and independent.

 

And hard to be saying this, I felt nothing. The trait of being people's person easily stepped back to make space for the craving of being an unreachable, private person. I missed logging in various places directly by my FB account and was playing games as a guest. I hated I got the news of FB acquiring whtsapp 30 minutes later than the whole world. I'd say, if at all I miss anything, its more of a customized feed of things and people and news I wanted to be updated of. But I realized I was absorbing much more than what I wanted or needed , which formed very low percentage of that. What I gained was the astuteness of understanding that all data is not information, and all information is not knowledge, and all knowledge is not important, and all that is important may or may not even matter to you!

 

Another interesting thing is life moves on, even if it is robbed of its important constituent one day. Like a time lapse photo sequence, you look at each frame and notice nothing but then you see first and last picture, you realize the whole day passed. Its like suddenly you realize one day and ask you friend, what happened to 'Kimi Katkar' where did she go while no one noticed. (Kimi Katkar, really??) So no one really notices that you disappeared, or gives a damn.

 

I should be back on FB, not really for the need to know or tell but more for the 'need to belong.' But I will like to bring a few changes in what I did. My problem is, as I know of, that I am an extremist. I want it all or nothing. Moderation is not my cup of coffee...so I may try to address that.

 

Frankly, sometimes all this also feels sheer stupidity. Just an irrelevant experiment which changes or proves nothing. More of a whim, or accepting a vice you are prepared to do nothing about. I wonder what's better, not knowing your vices or knowing, accepting and deciding to overlook them. Is FB a vice, is it an evolution channel where we are not sure which side survives and which one perishes? Is it a sort of autobiography or just a juvenile trend which stayed on for longer? Is it more advanced and preferred way to keep in touch with people? Social media is so strong and important for people and businesses, it can't be ruled out. All I think is, are we learning a wrong language because everyone else understands that? Oh well, I remember the first line of first chapter of my Civics book- " Man is a social animal" Social and Animal- two keywords... just saying!