Free from Facebook foolishness

We are pouring our lonely souls down the black pit of social networking fakery.

It’s no longer “So are we going steady?”. It’s … “Are we Facebook official?”

We have stopped phoning each other. We no longer text. fecking hell, we hardly ever talk.

We meet up, and because of Facebook, we already know what’s happened in the week. We know how work was, we know all the opinions on the latest news and recent sporting events and old-school singles and this weekend’s discos.

What happened to us?  Did we trade in conversation, insight and understanding for random, irregular snippets of each others’ lives?

Are we such a cynical, disconnected society that we can substitute the occasional “News Feed” scan for the age-old, tried-and-true reaching out and touching somebody?

I don’t think so. I reckon if we disconnect from over-connection, we can re-establish the bonds that made us friends instead of drinking buddies, mates instead of people-who-hang-out, lovers instead of people “In a relationship”.

You try it. Close down your Facebook, and call one of those “friends’.

And try not to talk about Facebook.

24 Replies to “Free from Facebook foolishness”

  1. I don’t send FB messages on peeps birthdays I text or call them but truth of the matter is that FB ensures I don’t forget their birthdays.

    It has it’s place but you should worry more about the peeps in Second Life and their avatar nonsense.

  2. The dudes sitting in the boardroom at the Freemasons HQ want all your personal info…. lets face it, FB is a great way to have millions of people profiled and cataloged.

    When else do people give up their personal info so willingly?! Just imagine the huge amounts of data saved on some distant server, pictures an’ all, all neatly submitted by FB users, nicely dated and filed.

    And just you try and shut down your account, lo and behold when two years later you decide to sign up again. Que smoke and crashing cymbals, your profile pops up as if you never left, try it…. just try it!

    Its a conspiracy I tell you! a damn conspiracy!!!

    now if you’ll excuse me, i seem to have misplaced my tin foil hat?!

  3. Oooh, I so like this piece! Well said and I really could not have said it better myself! It’s really unfortunate that we are fast becoming almost a heartless people that have lost any sense of relationships outside technology.We share our lives with people that we last saw like what, 10 years ago in school? University? What about talking to the person sharing your office space? Or do they catch up with what you did over the week end on Facebook? Very sad indeed…
    I so like this piece that I would like to share it… on my Facebook page… to see what the response will be like!!

    And, there are many ways of remembering birthdays.

  4. Not being contrary or anything, but that’s probably what they said when the telephone first came out, ‘people no longer travel to see each other face to face.’ Or email, ‘no one writes letters anymore’. I’m surprised, Joe, given your field of work. I for one embrace how FB has widened people’s horizons. The world is changing. Were it not for Hi5, I wouldn’t be here. There is plenty in my life that I do not share on my FB page. Plenty that I could sit down face to face and talk about with others. There is plenty room for FB in my life. I reckon every person can find a use for facebook in their life. Alternative to the address book, post board, little black book, mini blog for the verbally challenged, hobbie (alternative to collecting stickers, dating service,the possibilties are endless). For me, means I can keep people at arm’s length. I find it easier that email. Never been one for letter writing. I get bored easily. Easier than a text, thanks to a full key board. Plus it’s free.

    But point taken on the data collection thing. I’d worry, if it weren’t that, for me, the pros outweight the cons. The odds are also in my favour. One in a billion. I think those are pretty safe odds.

    Point is, talk is overrated. Facebook is far easier than other forms of communication and is a useful supplement for some of my relationships, even the basis of a lot of them. The world is changing. I choose to change with it. Besides, with the ease of facebook, letter writing and face to face meetings become all the more novel, making one lucky enough to get one know just how special they are.

  5. Marry me Tara. Lets have 4 children, a 3-bedroomed house in a neighbourhood that used to have white people in the 80s, a no-breed kutu and a muhabros tree in the back garden.

    blardy well put 🙂

  6. My cheeks are burning. 🙂

    Nice try, Mos_Native. But that ship has sailed. That porn thing was a deal breaker. I’ve now got my eye on ACM, since he came to my rescue with his Fair Trade porn. Am afraid for me to take your ass back, you’re just gonna have to do better than that. o_O

  7. screw the porn thing Tara!

    screw ACM! … ok, not literally … but figuratively.

    i got wood reading your comment … ok, maybe not … but still, come on, u cant go about writing like that and let me watch you go! oh no Tara, oh no! take my ass back, take it back!!!!!

    *p.s. when i said screw the porn thing i didnt mean that we sharnt have a movie or 15 in the bottom drawer of the headboard in the main bedroom of our 3-bedroomed house in the neighbourhood that used to have white people in the 80s*

  8. LOL… bladdy hell I’m rolling on the damn floor here @ Mos_Native and Tara!

    but for real Tara, you sound like my kind of gal, your seemingly jaded personality and general dislike for humanity… bloody marvelous!

    anyhow, on that fine point about ‘the times they are a changing’, I’ve always wondered what would happen if one could travel back in time with a soul stealing box aka digital camera or a laptop, i think you would be burned at the stake quite promptly myself, but this social networking shyte is just ridiculous.

    So much for progress! Just take a look at ‘developed’ countries, at the extreme end of social networking sites people are forgoing the traditional courtship for mail order brides, pick your chose, Russian, Asian, Newzealandish what what! for crying out loud what ever happened to good ole beer goggles?, lurching across a smokey bar, eyes glowing like brake lights, breath reeking like a fermenting cesspool to proposition some poor young lass? hmmmm, the good ole days people, the good ole days. Muhabros trees, chicken mesh fences and meailie meal porridge with peanut butter!

  9. You said it when you said FB makes it easier, it lets you keep people at arm’s length. You form and maintain superficial “friendships” with people you don’t really give two shits about.

    I’m done, I’m gonna make my FB a contact point, enough with the whole “I ate a good curry today” rubbish.

    As for your torturaaas love affair you two … I’d hate to be there when you meet.

  10. Mos_Native, didn’t presume otherwise (re*) 🙂 I know I’d have to take you as you are, porn and all. And I would, seeing as you’d have to take me as I am, all feminist and all. But, just so you know, with me, you wouldn’t have the time or energy to getting round to making use of that porn collection of yours. 🙂

    Skriff, oh stop. You’re making me blush. Although on the mail order front, as long as it’s Fair Trade, why not?** Can you imagine all those poor fuckers who always crash and burn? Mail order just broadens the horizons. Going on the back of Joe’s argument about marrige contracts and shit, improves the odds dramatically.

    **For the record, there is no such thing, in this age, as a Fair Trade Mail Order Brides. As such, I do not condone mail order bride business. I thought I should make that clear in case someone I work with reads this. You see, it does not do to condone such acts, when you work in the field of ending violence against women.

  11. Mail order briding is pretty interesting. Firstly, (I assume the majority of) these women are pretty desperate and don’t have much of a future at home.

    Secondly, it’s a win-win situ, as long as the bride doesn’t get abused upon arrival. I don’t know.

  12. @skriff – chicken mesh fences, oh dude, u got me all nostalgic and shit!

    A house just wasnt complete without them gangster chickens laying them eggs 🙂

  13. How does that rub your delicate feminist sensibilities Tara?

    Just think, you search through a catalog of women, select your desired make, model, year and mileage, input credit card details and make your purchase, including freight and duties your new bride should land within the week, bubble wrapped and eagerly awaiting her new ‘owner’ at the customs dispatch desk.

    Quality assurance from the vendor, a money back guarantee, certificate of origin and a service plan…

    now how is the luckless bastered who has to order a woman online not supposed to treat this woman like anything other than a piece of equipment?!

  14. Exactly why I think it really sucks. Also for a woman to be sooo desperate is a symptom of something really wrong with that society, especially since this is not something seen with men, as far as I am aware. It sucks. But enough preaching. Morning y’all.Just got into the office. Feeling good. But, I guess it’s downhill from here. Just looked up Jb on Facebook. He’s still there. Fingers crossed it turns out like the last time, plus I survive the subsequent cull. 🙂

    See JB, we’re talking.

  15. LOL Tara, I’m not planning to delete the account, since it won’t be deleted ANYWAY. I’m gonna trim it down to basic info, and no culling this time!

  16. marriage already commodifies women to the highest bidder in any case. the mail order system just formalises things and applies cold roman-dutch law to all the fuzzy cultural ambiguities. it blatantly and calculatingly does what has always been done under the guise of culture and civility.

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