I’m at the beach in Sorrento, immersed in glorious sunshine and refreshing bay water. It’s a serene, soulful, personal moment. Commitments, responsibilities, worries and all connections have been left on the shore. And then it hits – I should share this moment on Facebook.
It’s pure self-indulgence. Sure, some people may find it interesting enough to communicate their jealously – heck that’s the reason I’d post it, right – but, really, who cares? What value would it add to anyone’s day? More to the point, what focusing on other people’s reactions to this personal moment take away from my own experience of the moment.
It’s become so easy to share these little moments, that everyday occurrences that you’d usually (or should I say ‘previously’) only comment on to someone you were with at the time, or maybe saw later that day, are now broadcast to the Facebook world as if they are big news. Facebook has done to daily communication what the tabloid press did to the news – denigrated it to be about meaningless, but indulgent, lowest common denominator bites of information.
Smart phones put instant connection to this world at our fingertips 24/7. Great, but it makes for more restless shallow experiences, where the story is more important than the experience – like the camera has led many tourists to see a foreign city through a framed digital screen so they remember every element of a place they never really experienced. It almost leaves you lonely in the real world when you lose reception or just think enough’s enough. At that point, the benefit and beauty of personal reflection is lost.
Not everyone is on Facebook, and I admire those friends of mine who have resisted, though sometimes wish they could see my latest witty status update. And I do use it a fair bit, far more than I’d like. But I like to think my updates include – in their brief state – some meaning, wit or even food for thought. I’m generally not announcing my location, current activity or mood. I try to save that for conversation and if it doesn’t make it to conversation, it probably wasn’t that important.
My thinking is, if something I post isn’t ‘liked’ or commented on by any of my ‘friends’, then I shouldn’t have posted it. I like to engage with people and I want people to actually find my updates interesting, as someone who likes writing, being creative and making people laugh, think or just reflect. But when you get to the point of continually checking for comments, that’s also a sign it’s time to re-engage with the real world.
For some people it seems now that an experience isn’t real or tangible until Facebook knows about it. If a tree falls in the woods and doesn’t update its Facebook status, did it really fall?
I also have a theory that people update less when they’re in a relationship. I haven’t really had the chance to test that myself, though I did recently have a very close friendship with a great girl who I could talk to in a way I haven’t really with anyone since my last girlfriend a few years ago. Until things went a little haywire I felt lowered urges to talk to Facebook. I had someone real to talk to. And since then I’ve wound back any vague or emotional status’. You know the ones that are just seeking questions for more information, as if the poster didn’t want to seem like they were revealing everything, but hey, since you asked… Things like ‘Karen is so angry at you’. Who Karen? Come on, we’re all wondering now and you damn well know it! But hell, I won’t give you the satisfaction of asking.
I did think once about posting that I was going to practice more self-containment from now on with my updates; until I quickly realised the irony. Telling people you are or will be a certain way is so less effective than doing it without saying anything – explicitly at least. So I’m trying.
That said, I have recently discovered Twitter, and have tried to take much of my self-indulgent rambling there; where people who don’t care about even my weird and wonderful ponderings don’t have to read them but I can still blurt them out. While I do find it a little ‘lonely’ at times, because only one of my friends follows me (the girl mentioned earlier stopped following me, I hope only temporarily as she got me on there and I liked writing things with her reading them in mind). Not that I want all my friends reading my tweets, I like to be able to just write anything that seems interesting or expresses thoughts I feel strongly about that I may not want to put on Facebook. I find Twitter a more adult forum – an information hub, a place to engage in mature discussion on just about any topic, a place for mindless banter and a sub-cultural feeding ground. If you want it to be, and use it that way anyway.
In the end, I need to continue to pull myself away from Facebook and engage in real things. Reading, writing, socialising, seeing things near and far, taking part in a range of activities, and meeting people (in person!). All the things life is about.
If I want to tell people about them, well it should make good conversation over a beer; and in the meantime I can focus on enjoying the moment.
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