Face Off

My relationship with Facebook has always been a tumultuous one. Like lovers we've flirted, argued, fallen out, become obsessed with each other, gotten bored, broken up and declared that we will never, ever have anything more to do with each other again if it kills us: repeatedly. I've even done what I do with all of my most passionate relationships: burnt bridges with my writing that ensure - hypothetically - that there is no going back even if I want to (and I do always want to).

Like any love, Facebook is often wonderful: a tool that allows ease of communication that our parent's generation couldn't imagine. Friends in one place: their lives and their pictures and their thoughts in one place. The ability to be constantly plugged in to the people you love, as well as many people you don't. A source of entertainment, of security, of support. A great way to flirt, to hook up, to meet people of the opposite sex (I've started at least two relationships with it). Fun. Interesting. Funny. For many people, Facebook is a great and noble thing.

It isn't for me. And I can't do it anymore.

Facebook creeps me out. The love has gone - died, finally - and the whole thing creeps me out. Never mind that instead of writing a tricky chapter of my book I'm procrastinating by looking at wedding photos of people I've never even seen; never mind that instead of preparing for my classes I'm changing my profile picture. Never mind that I've seen 45 photos of a baby somebody I knew 20 years ago just had. Never mind that I actually find myself caring if somebody tags an unflattering photo of me, as if anyone doesn't know what I actually look like. Never mind that instead of reading Steinbeck I'm reading the status update of a person I met three times in 2002. This is all peripheral: a waste of time, of course, but time is easy to throw away. I also spend at least five or six minutes a day talking to insects, and that's a waste of time too.

No: the creepiness runs deeper than that, and my problem is this:

We have evolved over a very long time to exist as individual entities. In ourselves, with ourselves; with our own thoughts, in private. If we were supposed to be aware of everything that everybody we have ever met is thinking, seeing, doing, or feeling constantly, we would have evolved so that we can do that: we would have a small inbuilt radio in our brains, tuned into our peers. We would be able to convey our thoughts telepathically. If our lives were supposed to be exposed to everyone all the time, we would all live in one large room - like some kind of futuristic orgy - and talk at each other all the time and compare how fat we've all got or how old we're all looking now, or how successful/well travelled we've become, or how quickly each of us got "snapped up".

This hasn't happened. We are still separate entities, and yet we have started living like we're not. And I simply can't handle the noise. I don't want to know the thoughts of hundreds of people at once: many of which I didn't want to know the thoughts of when they were actually in my lives. I don't want to hear their jokes, or know how much they drank, or what they're doing on a Friday night. I don't want to see their new house, or their new haircut. If they're my friends, and I love them, I want them to tell me - properly, in time, as they choose - what they want to tell me: me, and not everyone. How they're feeling, what they're doing: what they've done to their hair and why. But a blanket form of communication? It's just too damn noisy. Like walking into an electrical shop with every single item turned on. I just want to listen to one goddamn CD at a time.

And it's more than even that. Our lives all take one individual direction at a time - we can only ever float on one current - but Facebook makes me feel like everyone is on one big tide: coming in and going out again at the same time. And I don't want to feel that. I don't want to subconsciously direct my life because of what everyone else is doing: feel pressure to marry because everyone else is, or get a real job because my friends all have them, or go to lots of parties so that I have photos too. I don't want to pitch my life into the mass and compare it, contrast it, fight for it, defend it. I don't want to feel like life is in any way a competition. I don't want to either feel proud of it in comparison - as free as I am, and as independent - or ashamed, because I am alone and taking so many risks. I don't want to know if I win or lose. I don't want my life to be in any way pulled or tugged by the lives of others: by the masses that sweep me along every time I click a button. I just want to do what is right for me. And take my own direction regardless.

The thing is: life fluctuates. While making friends is part of its beauty, so - too - is losing them. Just as we take people into our lives, so should we let them back out again: if I've learnt anything this year, it's that holding on to anything is not natural. Knowing everyone forever is not natural. And hearing them constantly - throwing our lives in to their current and letting ourselves be tugged along with them - is not natural.

I know who my friends are. I know the people are who are there when I'm sad, or will laugh with me when I'm not: I know the people whose engagements and weddings and babies I will be thrilled by, because I will be a part of them. I know who I care about, and who cares about me; I don't need to be reminded by a photo of them and a few lines of writing every few days. Because the people I love I will love away from Facebook, and the people I don't will fade away: just as they were supposed to. And my life will continue in its own direction, in its own way, as it should. Quietly and passionately and bravely and independently. Genuinely and with integrity. Without all of the noise.

Contentment in life is not about turning on all the music you can find at once and playing it as loudly as you can: it's about finding the pieces you love and listening to them, one by one. It's about following your own tune.

And now that I'm no longer a part of Facebook, maybe it'll be a little easier to do that.