Facebook - Old Relationships and New Technology - by Stephen Morris @ 12:51pm 15/07/07
I can vividly remember the moment when I knew that the boy/girl thing would never be the same again. It was about 6 years ago and I was 19ish. My mate gushed, "Here, Ste. Have a look at this - photos on your mobile phone." Immediately, my mind was catapulted into the future, fast forwarded to a plethora of broken hearts and lost loves. Things would never be the same again for the wandering boyfriend for a start - not (I hasten to strongly add) that this was one of my concerns. I was too busy tormenting myself with my own unique reasons for despising the camera phone. But more of that later!
And so it proved as advances in technology changed our social lives completely without anybody having a moment to stop and consider the consequences.
A technological advance that has burst onto the scene in the past 12 months is the social networking site. The ubiquitous Facebook and MySpace are now sewn into the fabric of our lives to such an extent that we truly do live a life inside and outside of cyberspace. I'm far from a technophile so I didn't see them ever affecting my life. It seemed that they were everywhere - the next big thing - amongst teenagers, but at 24 (last year) I thought I'd missed the boat. Until absolutely everybody I know registered and I started to get all manner of friend requests and pokes. I felt left out - my mum had forgotten to sign the permission slip for the end of year trip and I was stuck back in class with the teacher helping to pull down artwork ready for the next class.
You cannot control these sites. You cannot avoid them dominating your daily life. Trust me, I've tried and you can't. If it's not getting tagged in all manner of compromising or (if you're lucky) uncompromising situations it's your Daily News Feed on the blower to give you a life update. I hate my Daily News Feed (Facebook). It's a person. It lives. It breathes. And it causes misery. It's my best friend with access to all of the gossip that I crave, but without the ability to even spell tact. It's T.A.C.T. Daily News Feed. Exercise some from time to time, kid. There are things that people, real people, just don't want to know. It's why we invented the white lie. I was particularly impressed when you informed me - with a glint in your eye and a wry, knowing smile - that my ex-girlfriend's status is now single. He knew first and felt the need to impart the news before it'd even started to hit me. Thanks Daily News Feed - you're a pal!
Facebook is a godsend to those with one-upmanship tendencies (of which there are many!) as it offers the chance to continually update profiles and for everybody else to get chapter and verse. It isn't difficult to see the levels that this could reach in the ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend stakes. Imagine: on responding to Sarah's (Jack's estranged girlfriend from The Golden Generation) fifteenth status change of the day, and the knowledge that she is 'currently deciding whether to go out with Brad Pitt or George Clooney this evening, but can't so may ménage' Jack updates his, and quick as a flash Sarah learns that Jack is 'struggling to keep his head above water in a hot tub packed by the girls from the Call On Me video and is mightily glad of the natural life floats attached to their chests'. It could go on and on and on. And do you think Daily News Feed will be more than happy to keep his wooden spoon out of the closet and in use all day? You better believe it.
Above all else, I have my own unique reason for despising the uncontrollable influence of MySpace, Facebook and YouTube on my life: I am the single most unphotogenic person on the planet. This is a fact. As sure as the sky is blue and water is wet. It is a deep-rooted psychological phobia born out of years of torture and it's going nowhere. I've always been this way. Don't believe me? I'll upload an excerpt from my first novel (the novel is fiction but this section was entirely autobiographical) written when I was 20 in a couple of days. Need more? I could probably dig out my Y2, Y3, Y4, etc. school photographs along with accompanying quality control stickers and receipts requiring zero payment.
I can't stop them. I can no longer control images of myself appearing. They have a life of their own. I've had a loud and clear message from Pandora: Don't come anywhere near me with that box because it ain't happening!
As Jeff Goldblum famously said on sight of Jurassic Park: "Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
When it comes to this type of technology, I sure as hell could have told them the scientists they shouldn't!
N.B. all of the above hasn't stopped me going back on Facebook and My Space so please feel free to add. They're just too addictive – like crack without the high.