Monday, April 13, 2009

Bored With Facebook

I like Facebook. However I also find it rather tedious. It interesting to read about many others daily lives, several of them are witty and catch your attention. However, I primarily find myself wondering: what interesting or witty thing could I write in my status update that would garner comments. The online equivalent of "Pay attention to me! I'm relevant!" I even posted as a status update some time ago that I was feeling rather irrelevant with an ellipse inserted within the syllables of the word irrelevant to symbolize a trailing off of relevancy.

I'm paraphrasing now, but I once saw written a comment about Facebook as the place where you go and confirm that your friends from high school and college are leading as uninteresting lives as you do. A bit cynical, but dangerously close to the truth, I'd say.

I don't think of it as an indictment of Facebook as a Web 2.0 application or as a networking device, or of the people who frequently read, write and contribute to their page on a daily, hourly or minute by minute accounting of their thoughts. I feel that as many of us journal our typically American and suburban lives, working, playing, eating, going to movies, raising children, going to church... that we're somehow dilluting the importance that our own existence brings to other people by distilling it into what is essentially powerpoint presentations of our lives.

Be relevant! Tell those people on your Facebook friend list what it truly means to you that they are your friend.

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