I’m writing this in my notebook while sitting in the original social networking site of my youth: the mall. It’s amazing how much things have changed in ten years. Although I guess a decade is a long time, and I’m not quite sure if the change has been for better or worse. It’s kind of sad that right now I find myself feeling alone while I sit in a crowded building listening to kids scream in the arcade, yet other times I can feel surrounded by friends while I sit in front of my computer listening to nothing more than the drone of my desk fan. I can’t recall life ever posing this problem in 2000. Has society really changed that much over ten years, or am I the one that has changed?
I guess I can’t question my social skills too much. I just received a phone call (not a text message, email, nor Facebook message) from a friend reminding me of a get together at his house later tonight. Perhaps it’s not me, but instead just my generation that has lost the grip on what it is to be social. In my mind, it seems we all take the easy road when it comes to human interaction. Has the modern social network brought us closer together, or instead driven a digital wedge between us? Or perhaps the question should be rephrased: have WE driven a digital wedge between one’s individual self and the people we once called friends?
While I stop to ponder this thought, a group from the Alabama School for the Deaf and Blind just walked past me. I remember while I worked at the mall a few years ago, I would see them in here quite frequently, but I guess I never paid too much attention to them. Although watching them now, walking amongst others frantically pounding out messages on their cell phones, I begin to think maybe my generation has a disability similar to theirs. Those deaf and/or blind kids actually lack one or more basic senses God has given to most of us, yet they still come to the mall on a regular basis and walk in groups carrying on conversations with each other more personal and intimate than most conversations I have had in days. I can’t say I have those types of interaction very easily, so I have to wonder who is actually disabled; the blind kid walking with his friends through the mall, or the otherwise “normal” kid confined to a chair in front of a computer?
I have to stay focused. On what, however, I’m not too sure of. Why did I sit here and start writing? What am I trying to uncover?
The question “what is my relationship with Facebook?’ has just entered my mind. Does a mechanic have a “relationship” with a ratchet? Does a doctor have a “relationship” with a scalpel? Why do I associate a similar “relationship” with a social tool? Maybe I use social networking in lieu of actual social interaction. The social networking “tool” seems to have been mistaken and misused as a social “alternative.” Maybe it’s not mistaken by society as a whole. Maybe it’s not even misused only by my generation. However, I can say with certainty I personally seem to have made this mistake. I’ve let my relationships with real, living, breathing people be replaced by a “.com,” and I think I’m becoming more aware of why I am so uneasy having social networking occupy such a large portion of my life.
So now to resolve this uneasiness.
–Blank. That’s what my mind is at this moment. Totally void of cohesive thoughts. A million tiny synapses, all seemingly unrelated to each other, are firing through my mind as organized as shrapnel thrown from an exploding frag grenade. These thoughts are almost as deadly, too. From time to time, they seem to come together and form a picture–but rarely when applied to the modern social network. When I turn to that modern social network, my thoughts become so convoluted to anyone other than me. Will this network be the death of me?
What part of “me” do I even feel is on the brink of death? I recently thanked a girl for noticing my patience and forgiveness. She actually noticed and commented on traits I feel make me the person I am. Do these traits translate into the social network the same? I don’t believe so. Instead, the social network seems to transform these traits into apathy and weakness. Does it only affect certain people this way? It seems as such. I just had a group of elderly folks walk past me, laughing about something in their conversation. They seem much happier than I am right now. Perhaps the difference lies in a term that has been attached to me for years; “old soul.” The greatest generation became as such from deeds and actions, NOT comments and posts.
I’m almost an hour into this voyage through my sub conscience, and what have I found? I dwell too much on “ones and zeros.” I pour too much of my time, heart, and soul into an entity I confuse as a friend. Through a relationship with that entity (the modern social network), I have encountered misunderstanding, confusion, and heartache—but I don’t want to say those are the ONLY encounters I have with the modern social network…because I also have acquired both wisdom and knowledge I wouldn’t have found elsewhere quite as easily.
On the flip side, the modern social network also allows me to display myself in a different light. The display may be true to me at that moment, but it tends to appear as nothing more than unformulated and premature thoughts to anyone else. The display may be honest, but is more often than not interpreted by others as insanity. Unedited and unbridled thoughts which I put on display for the world to see rarely seem to get me anywhere positive—it actually seems to weaken my own insight. In moments where I should be introspective, I instead turn to a social network that twists and contorts raw information plowing through my brain at light speed, and that network transforms those thoughts into a big cluster-fuck of nonsense. That’s not who I was ten years ago when I walked through this very mall with my closest friends, and God–damn it if that’s who I will be ten years from now.
Facebook, I’m “un-friending” you.
Friends, let me befriend you.
– Mike Dean