Why I Don't Like Facebook - Zadie Smith said it better than I ever could

Obviously, I had to spend a few minutes on facebook before writing this post. I do it, but I often feel sad and disconnected afterwards. I mostly enjoy reading the updates of those people whose blogs I read, so I already have a "bigger picture" of what's going on and/or who they are before reading their snippets.

In second place, I enjoy the updates of a handful of people I know really well and about whom it doesn't bother me in the least to see just bits and pieces out there. This category also includes colleagues (particularly from grad school) whose updates make me feel that I still know what they're up to to some degree. Oh, and people who are acquaintances and who post lots of photos of their gorgeous newborns so I can keep up with that new development in their lives. ;-)

More commonly, though, facebook just makes me feel disgruntled and disconnected. "What is really going on in his/her life?" I often wonder after a cryptic post from a friend with whom I'm not really in touch. "Hmmm... I wonder what happened to him/her." There's no underlying narrative, no context, nothing. When really serious things happen (like a death in the family of the friend in question) I am eternally thankful when the person spells it out for me -- or someone else does in the comments. More often than not, I'm just left hanging.

One classic example was that over a month ago someone posted a prayer request for someone who was gravelly ill. A commenter asked whether this person was such and such's father and I commented too, asking for more details. Nothing else was forthcoming and in the busyness of everyday life, I forgot to call a friend in Massachusetts who might have more information (calling her would have involved awkward apologies as to why I'm not in touch and a lengthy "catch up" conversation -- see? that's why I feel upset when friends don't read the blog). Yesterday, K was on the phone with another friend of ours (one with whom we're regularly in touch) and he happened to ask about our common friend. It turns out the man died two weeks ago. I felt so bad!! Facebook gave us a hint to the situation, but that was that... oh well.

Last, but not least, most of the people in my contact list are random folks I met 20, 30 years ago and in whose lives I'm not interested in the least (thankfully, those hardly ever post and I can easily hide them, now that I FINALLY figured out how to do that! Phew!).

So, yeah, when Laura (Apt 11d) wrote this post today, I really identified with what Zadie Smith has written about facebook. Thanks, Laura!

I want to cite the same excerpt Laura included in her post. And here is Zadie Smith's full essay, "Generation Why?" in which she reviews the film The Social Network and the book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier for The New York Review of Books.

When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears. It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned...

Shouldn’t we struggle against Facebook? Everything in it is reduced to the size of its founder. Blue, because it turns out Zuckerberg is red-green color-blind. “Blue is the richest color for me—I can see all of blue.” Poking, because that’s what shy boys do to girls they are scared to talk to. Preoccupied with personal trivia, because Mark Zuckerberg thinks the exchange of personal trivia is what “friendship” is. A Mark Zuckerberg Production indeed! We were going to live online. It was going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this? Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn’t it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life inthis format?...

It’s a cruel portrait of us: 500 million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore.

That's why I shall stick to blogging. It is meaningful, messy, full of individual character. This is still a small, virtual slice of who I am, of the fullness of me, but it's infinitely more than one can get with status updates or 140 characters on Twitter. Those who care enough about me will read what I write. And it's been a real pleasure to make so many wonderful friends through this virtual "window on the world" that is my blog. Too bad nearly all of my "real life" friends are caught up in the superficial tangle of facebook and other social media. Ha! And last, but not least, this blog is all green, because that's my color, not the impersonal white with a bit of blue over there...