Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Social Network

The other day I was meandering through the lists of people I should know on Facebook, and after about 20 minutes I was wondering why I wasn't done.

On one hand it was a fascinating experience--there were people on that list I hadn't thought about for roughly 10 years! I've had 10 years worth of acquaintances! Get out! Is that the guy who said--and did they really get married? Who--why? What is he doing? What happened to her??

Then I realized what I was doing and the enormity of all the people I do not consider, but at one time did in some way, mounted to the full height of what it really was. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people that I used to willingly give the time of day to that I now did not waited for me to consider them once more. And quite frankly that seemed like a very steep dive in my attempt to over come my now custom mode of social recluse.

I don't talk to anyone anymore, and I like it like that. Life consists of me, and my family, and a few friends...and that's all there needs to be. My grandmother lived 90 years and I'm sure she didn't care about what the girl who sat behind her on the school bus when she was...(I was going to say 7, but I don't think they had school busses then...). Even Facebook didn't begin with this enormity. It had about 30 people from the collective freshman dorms at BYU when it started. And while it's extremely small potatoes to post up a couple pictures and a post every now and again, I find it extremely exhausting to think of all the people Facebook is asking me to think about catching up with.

But I suppose overall I would deem Facebook's evolution and commandeering of our collective American society as a good thing with a few dark faces. But no wonder life get's so complicated. The wonder is plainly in the magnitude. There are just too many people for one person to try and connect to. Is it our mind's new way of organizing? Classifying people into groups, by work place, by school, by interest, by time period...is that really how we connect to people? Have we changed as people so much that our hellos need to be broadcast to all who subscribe? Are we really so inept to not be able to keep up with those we consider friends? Are we using Facebook as a replacement for real activities with real people and not pages of representation?

I don't know. That's when I logged out.