The Social Network

Ahhhhh Facebook. I joined you when I was single and you led me to my soulmate. Would we have connected otherwise? Maybe. (soulmate says yes) Did you make it exceptionally easy? Yes, yes you did. So in effect, thank you Mark Zuckerberg for my happiness. How weird is that?


I hope by now you've all seen the Facebook movie. If you haven't, you should. Not that it's all factual and true, historical fiction if you will. But it is good. Great writing and incredible delivery of such lines. The opening scene between 'Mark' and the girl who's about to break up with him took 72 takes. Now that was some fast smart talking. Prolly understood 43% of it.



Erica Albright: You are probably going to be a very successful computer person. But you're going to go through life thinking that girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole.

A little while back, in what could be described as a dream like state, I had this incredible moment of FB clarity. In what felt like a millisecond, I was able to break down the psychology, if you will, about Facebook and the people who 'use' it.

First watch this. It's funny.



Disclaimer: I do predict that this non professional psychological breakdown will be nowhere close to how riveting i thought it was at the time that i came to all these incredible conclusions.

Here goes:

There are the people who have an account but don't really care and rarely check it. YOU people will have 3-4 birthday posts. You get what you give. (unless you have REALLY nice and caring FB friends).

There are the FB ghosts/voyeurs. You're there but we never see you or hear from you and your profile picture has been the same since you joined. But you are always on. Always looking at people's pictures and conversations. You are the creepy Facebook people. And I think you are very selfish. You take and take and never give anything- not an awkward status, not a picture of your dog. Nothing. And we forget about you creeping which makes it even more creepy.

There are people who are mildly active. Maybe a status update here and there, maybe a comment on a picture. You're ok by me.


Then there are the VERY active people who are VERY UNfunny with their lame-o status updates or who post things allllll the time that you never care about. The people who put constant updates about their kids not sleeping or not peeing in the right place fall into this category as well. People- this is Facebook. Not complain about my life- book. If you want compassion, join an online forum and complain your heads off. You're very depressing and I don't think FB is the appropriate platform for you.

There are the people who have conversations with their friends (like actual real friends not fb friends. VERY different) galore on their walls. The same people make plans on their walls. And the people they're 'talking' to are people they could text, bbm, email or god forbid call in order to make the plan. I'll admit sometimes I'm guilty of this one. I don't have a huge problem with THAT person, just think it's curious.

In the same category- couples who make plans on each other's walls:

'Are you coming home after work?'
'Yes, see you at 5:30.'

'Sweetie, can you turn the light off in the kitchen?'
'Sure.'

Weird.

I suppose there are different reasons to use FB. Showing people who you're friends with and what you're doing with your life is high on the list. When someone puts up an album of a trip they recently took, with 207 pictures in it, they want you to look at what they've been up to. And when you see that person and you say something about their latest trip to Costa Rica and how gorgeous the resort was, please don't act all pretend embarrassed. YOU PUT UP THE PICS FOR PEOPLE TO SEE. And likely a solo bikini shot was in there too. Oych. The lack of self awareness killls me.
There are the people who use it for promoting their companies or blogs. I think they're ok. :) The bombardment can be a bit much. But luckily you can hide those people from your news feed if you so desire.

FB birthday love is amazing. It's like you've time warped back to elementary school and everyone knows it's your bday and everyone wishes you well. Sweeeeeet.


There is another very peculiar FB type situation has happened to me and I hope to others. There are some people who I'm very close with on FB. We write on each other's walls and we are very complimentary towards each other. But we've never met. Never spoken one word in person face to face. How odd is that? And not someone I knew from elementary school. I even once ran into my super close FB friend and kinda hid because I thought our first face to face would be awkward. Peering over my shoulder one evening and looking at my fb wall, my man once asked me- hey, how do you know Daniel Murphy (not his real name)? Yeahhhhhhhhhh, how do i possibly explain THAT one?!?!?!?

There are the people who have babies and post pictures of themselves miliseconds after giving birth and I think to myself: self, would i want pictures uploaded to Facebook with my glasses on, obviously no make up, hair in a high pony with some kind of stretchy hair band thing, sweaty cuz i just pushed a baby out of my hooch put onto Facebook for my 500+ 'friends' to see- NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And if the new mother doesn't post the pics and the new father does- just as bad cuz the mom knows and for some CRAZY REASON IS OK WITH IT!!!!!!!!!!! (You know she knows, because the pics are never taken down).

Deeeeeeep breath. Feel better now.

There are the people that are funny and don't abuse the system. Like when they get an inspiration to write a status update, it travels through a filtering process and then either dies or makes it. And often it's a good one.


The 'check-in' feature is interesting. If you're deranged and want to stalk someone, then it's grrrrreat. I use it to promote places I love. But I can see how it could be a bit creepy.

Fb gives you the chance to put yourself out there. Whomever you choose to be. I hope we all know that most of it is smoke and mirrors. We know you're not THAT happy. I mean, come on. But it is in your own control to put out there what you want. And then the people will judge you. It's quite simple really. So if someone judges you to be a party animal it's likely because you've put up multiple albums of yourself and your friends boozing it up! And if people are dumb enough to think that's what you do 24/7, then there's really no hope for them, is there.

Peace owwwwwwwt.