Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Facebook, staying connected?

Most everyone is on Facebook ... even my Baby Boomer mother. As soon as her finger pressed send to register, questionable pictures from benders and other lewd happenings once proudly displayed on my profile were magically untagged and hidden.
Anyway ... with the universality of Facebook in mind, there are certain people who fill your News Feeds everyday with nonsense. You know who I'm talking about ... the people on your friends list you can't delete for whatever reason who post too much crap and/or inappropriate or annoying items.
Those who post brief and cryptic messages so people pay attention to them.
Those who post highly personal and inappropriate comments they would never say out loud to another person but feel comfortable enough typing on their Facebook page.
It's like a car crash ... you can't look away.
I am moving closer and closer everyday to believing technology is taking us farther and farther away from humanity. We are going in the wrong direction. On Facebook we are "staying connected" but are we really? We are half dressed and half awake in our homes, hunched over a computer screen Facebook stalking people we hardly speak to or interact with in real life. Commenting on pictures of their newborn child and family, pictures from vacations and parties and updates about stressful days at work or fun weekends. Lucky for us, with the advancement of technology, we can do this from Smartphones now!
Is this really staying connected? Does anyone talk on the phone anymore or visit people for face-time or write letters or e-mails? Look around you ... people are glued to their Smartphones, surfing the Internet and stuck on Facebook while life is passing them by! It reminds me of a growing trend I've seen: a couple on a date at a restaurant, sitting at a table but not interacting because they are glued to their phones.
Are we obsessed with Facebook because we don't care about people anymore and want to take time when it's convenient for us to look in on their lives and comment so they think we actually care? Or are we trying to have too many friends and be too involved?
Yeah, it feels good to write a status update and have people comment or when your birthday rolls around and all your "friends" are reminded and you get about 50 brief one-liners saying happy birthday! Don't lie. You know it feels good. But it's all bullshit. Instead of living we are focused more on sharing every detail of our lives across a network. It's like when something funny happens at work and you can't wait to tell your better half or roommate or best friend when it's quitting time ... now you can't wait to tell all your Facebook friends instantly.
I understand the pros of Facebook -- staying connected with family and friends who live far away, sharing pictures and life experiences, inviting friends to events, making humans unite and become one over a large network. But have we gone in the wrong direction with this technology? Overdosing?
What are we in now, the Technology Age? What if we are moving farther and farther away from knowledge and meaning and towards unneeded luxuries like Smartphones and iPads? Using our brains to build bigger bombs and smaller laptops. Why? To what end? Does anyone care about why we are here? Other life forms? What it is to be human? After-life? Does anyone think about these things anymore or am I the weirdo in this scenario?
The more technology we create, the more we "learn," the more we get farther away from knowledge and the more we do not know about what it is to be human, at its core, at its base. We are moving away from caring about this and into the phase of The Material Possessions Age.
What do we, as a society, worship? Beauty. Our bodies, which serve as mere shells and will resemble empty papier-mache forms as people mourn our death at an open casket viewing. We all know the end game so why the plastic surgery? To live life to the fullest because all we have is our years on Earth? Why don't we worship knowledge and intelligence instead of our computer screens and instant satisfaction? 

No comments:

Post a Comment