Facebook is destroying modern relationships. Next week I'll reveal water is wet.
It's been a long, long time since I've written in this blog. I'd like to say it's due to my crazy misadventures, so I will. That is exactly why I haven't written. Last August, after spending one of the best (and heart-breaking, but that's a different story for a different day) summers I've had farming on an organic veg farm while living in a solar-powered cabin with a bluegrass fiddler, his Tom Waits loving six year-old son and my good friend and (for one night) burlesque dance partner, I packed up my 1985 Pontiac Sunbird and drove from Southwest VA to New Jersey to start my year as a government-sponsored job developer to low-income adult clients.
There are more stories from that summer to now involving turtles, mirror masks, Thanksgiving in LA and sloppy cupcake birthday but what I'm focusing on here is not the times of personal change but of my day job and it's effect on my facebooking and facebooking's effect on my perception of modern relationships.
Facebook is a ticking timebomb of insecurity. Not only has the relationship status become a benchmark of coupledom, facebook has opened the door to stroking every fearful and irrational thought that can go through a person's involving their connection to another person. To varying degrees, everybody has insecure thoughts from innocent "I wonder if she thinks he's funnier than me" to the crazy "She laughed at his joke, she's totally cheating on me!" and almost everybody has learned how to filter the natural every day insecure thoughts from the warning bells.
Almost everybody.
Now we have facebook where every move, every moment, every person you've come in contact with and every situation can be (and will) placed in view of EVERYONE. I don't care if you have privacy settings, the second someone clicks "with _____" on that photo of the two of you touching tongue tips, for at least two hours twice as many people will see it.
We all throw our balls on the table with friends and declare this deal breaker or that, state if she kisses another person, even on the cheek, it's over or if they share a bed he's a dead man. But in all honesty, we all kind of bend the rules in that aspect. I don't mean full-on, by the books cheating. A guy hugs a girl, or a girl talks about intimate subjects with a friend, or two friends watch the "couple's show". Little stuff that has no effect on a strong relationship really, it's just life... unless it all happens at once. Like say, a new album of photos plus a flurry of comments illustrating how much fun the... other... person had watching House while eating chocolate with your S.O. finishing with a wink.
A WINK. The WHORE.
That is the detrimental effect of facebook on relationships. And not just romantic. Who hasn't gotten up in the morning to see photos of their friends at a bar or show the night before and thought "What the fuck? Why wasn't I invited?" when the truth is because it wasn't an event. Right place, right time they went out. Happens all the time. But when those photos are smack in the middle of acquaintances photos out with friends, well it's easy then for a person to think they're a loser whose S.O. has whores winking at him all over facebook.
What's the solution? We become an angry mob and destroy facebook? No, it's too useful as a networking tool. We all stop taking it so seriously? Never work. We'd all be faking that we're cool when really we're seething from emoticon and red-eyed photo that goes up. In a way, pretending to not care could lead to even deeper obsession. Some people can let it go, others chase small animals with a weed whacker screaming "I'M FUCKING FINE! STOP ASKING!"
Truth, there really isn't an all-out solution. An individual will just have to figure it out on their own based on what they need (which is dime-store psychoanalytic horse of a different color). I, personally, hid every person whose escapades created a pit of insecurity in me. Ex-boyfriend I'm still on good terms with, no newsfeed for you. Acquaintance I really like but am jealous of their success, see you when I visit. Person I can't stand but need to be on good terms with, I pull you up to specifically make fun of to my co-workers you fucking bigoted bitch... I'm not proud.
Not everyone needs to hide people and honestly the best course of action would be to stop taking cues from 20 blurry photo and making assumptions based little pictures made with parenthesis and ask the person in question what's up. Maybe even develop some deeper confidence.
But let's be real, this 2012. I watched a youtube video yesterday showcasing a japanese just-add-water fast food snack, there are cupcake vending machines and Survivor is still on.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/How-Do-I-Hide-Friends-on-Facebook/120909991290612
There, you don't even have to search for it.
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Every blog you write.. well, they're just beautiful! I especially liked the women with curves article.. coming from a guy, women who take it an extra step to be extra skinny are only making it extra hard for women with monroe bodys to be considered attractive .. personally, with facebook and extreme weightloss, our generation is being set up for failure..
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