Facebook as an Editing Project
My grandfather and some friends in the days before Friendster
Are we using status updates to keep up with the Joneses? Stan James explains why his Facebook friends often make him feel bad:
On Facebook they have been on an amazing vacation to exotic beaches. In person they confess that the vacation was a desperate attempt to save a marriage. On Facebook they have been to gliteratee tech conferences. In person they confess they haven’t been able to sleep for months, and are on anti-anxiety medication from the stress of financial pressures on their company. It is a strange case of schadenfreude for me to hear this, knowing that I had been jealous of their beach time and glamor. More »
“It cannot be psychologically healthy to compare yourself to these phantasms,” says James, drawing an parallel between television and Facebook: “Instead of actors in Hollywood, the characters are people that you know to be real and have actually met. The editing is done not by film school graduates, but by the people themselves.”
I took a short leave of absence from Facebook for reasons I can’t quite remember. Something about it being a relentless timesuck. But after transferring across Helsinki, Detroit, New York, and New Orleans within a year, I’m (re)learning that it’s pretty fantastic to be able to easily remain in touch with the people who pass through your life. Even if it’s only via their ambient chatter.
My ‘all or nothing’ reaction to technology fascinates and puzzles me. I’m working on being a ‘sometimes’ kind of guy.
And of course we’re constructing edited identities for the screen. It’s a good thing. When you visit somebody’s home, nobody takes you into the basement right away. Most people don’t want to go down there anyway.
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Gary Numan – Are Friends Electric?
Beggars Banquet, 1979 | buy buy mp3s
Released in 1979 as part of Numan’s ‘Tubeway Army’. “The single topped the UK charts and is notable for being the first electronic/synthesizer-based record to become a hit in the post-punk era. Whilst the track’s new and distinctive sound stood out at the time, sales also benefited from the record company’s use of a picture disc…” More
A tip of the hat to the relentlessly great & prolific Daily Dish.
The Lordsburg Killings 
Meeting Elvis 
Babushka Lady 
but one can keep in touch w/those friends via email. i found Facebook a giant waste of my time, even with friends with whom I re-connected and became dismayed at their levels of self-centeredness and obtuse belief that daily actions such as ordering dinner were important enough to tra-la-la across the Internets. or maybe it’s just me. i don’t really care what you’re doing from hour to hour. i assume it’s either something constructive or not.
the few friends i thought i’d lose by deleting my FB account months ago, i’ve kept in touch with via email and…GASP!! phone!! i get updates from them maybe once or twice/week via long-ish, well put together emails…sometimes even containing attachments w/photos of their children, or something neat they’ve done (I have a friend who’s on a cross-country mission to ‘find America’).
in the end, for me, getting off FB was the best thing. i am constantly bombarded by information as it is; not knowing what everyone was doing every single moment they could get their hands on FB has been quite a load off mostly useless info. from my plate.
cheers.
I hear you. I took a six-month break from Faceworld and strongly considered deleting my account. But after leaving some good people behind in NYC and Helsinki, I’m enjoying signing in for five minutes in the morning and maybe five minutes in the evening, just to see what people are up to and saying hello. Any more than ten minutes a day and, yeah, it’s a substitute for something else…
Also: everything I do from hour to hour is absolutely enthralling. Seriously.