Ever since snow and the "This is Bill" trend started to exist in the same universe at the same time, this particular meme has been circulating in my Facebook feed. When I saw it, my first thought was, "Well, that's sad for Bill. He doesn't seem to have any friends outside of his city or village." It prompted me to finally put down my thoughts about social networking, especially when a lot of people nowadays seem to be so passive-aggressive particularly about Facebook.
The Green Smoothie
Let me explain to you where the initial hate comes from. In order to do that, let's imagine Bill to be the opposite of that meme-Bill in the image up there. Bill likes to post pictures, mostly of food. One morning, Bill finds a new smoothie recipe, checks it out and posts about it on Facebook. Your comment? "No one cares about that green smoothie you made for breakfast! What's next? Your lunch? Your tea-time snack? Your dinner? Stop it!"
This is what the Facebook-haters probably hate the most about Facebook. Their annoying friend who posts 40 statuses or photos, per hour, about what they eat, what they wear, what they do, basically just all the banal, boring things in their life. People like that are just attention seekers, don't they know that they drive their friends crazy?!
It sounds awful, doesn't it? But's let's be honest here. Do you really have a friend who posts 40 statuses an hour? I don't. I don't even have any friend who posts 40 times per week. The most I ever saw anyone on my Facebook feed was probably twice a day. And you know what? Even if you have that 40-posts-per-hour-friend, you can block them! Or hide their posts from your feed. Or, if it really bothers you that much, just don't look at your Facebook feed at all. It really is that simple.
As for attention seeking, I'm sorry to break it to you, but everybody, including you and me, is an attention seeker. The noun people use the most everyday? It's "I". Maybe you should stop thinking, "I can't stand Bill's 40 posts," or, "It pisses me off that Bill shares the story of his green smoothie." Maybe start with, "Oh, Bill made a green smoothie," and at some point think, "Wow, it's great that Bill tried to make a green smoothie." You'll realize you won't be pissed at all. It's like magic. Because the truth is: if you start to genuinely care about your friends, Facebook will make you much less angry.
And the most important question: Why in the world must you be so butthurt about Bill's green smoothie to begin with? Or Bill's first-snow picture, for that matter? Does it hurt you, or maybe even kill you with boredom to have to see what Bill posts? I get it, you've had green smoothies before and you're not a fan, and you have a window to look at the snow just like Bill. But you see, maybe Bill has a friend who has never heard of green smoothies before. Or maybe, he's friends with some folks (from Vietnam, for example) who have never seen snow. He knows that they would love to see a picture of his green smoothie or the first snow, or even better, videos of it all. Things that are mundane and belong to Bill's everyday life might not interest you, but they might be more spectacular and less boring to Bill's friends who share less things in common with his everyday life (and -cough- only see him face-to-face every two years -cough-). So, please be a decent person and not complain or judge Bill, and go do something else if you are bored.
That Drunk Picture
We all know that Facebook has a bad reputation regarding their user's privacy. Very deserving, for that matter. It's completely legitimate that you don't want Facebook to use your personal information to enable market research for some random companies without your authorization. But it's the bitter truth that we can't change yet, so everyone should be able to decide for themselves how they want to handle that. The less legitimate reasons about your privacy, however, are the following: you don't want your employer to see that drunk photo of you from your friend's birthday party last night, and you don't want the government to come after you because you posted a photo of your dinner with a caption that says, "it was the bomb".
If your employer is not a professional hacker (which I bet does not apply to only the rarest of cases), you can decide whether or not they can see that drunk picture of yours. It's simple: you can edit your privacy in Facebook! You can decide who you want to allow seeing your party pictures, and who not. If your employer ends up seeing your drunk pictures, it's not Facebook's fault, it's yours.
If you live in a country that is modern and up-to-date with the latest technologies, it is indeed hard to not have the government sniff around in your private life. And you can't hide from the NSA anywhere, that's true too (damn it, America!). It's okay if you never want to post anything on Facebook because of that. But you see, the thing is, Facebook is not really the problem. Even if you don't post anything, the NSA can still track you down if they read something suspicious in your emails, and all you have to do is log into Facebook. If you really want to be safe, you have to quit Facebook, stop writing emails and give up on Skype calls. In fact, you have to quit the internet altogether. Or you should pick up an IT major to learn how to protect yourself from being spied on digitally. Or better yet, you should consult a shrink who can help you with your bordering-paranoia worries.
Bad For Your Mental Health
There are said to be studies out there that found out that people using Facebook tend to be more depressed than those who don't. The pathomechanism is this: Most people only post their happy moments on Facebook. Someone who is going through a bad time (or sometimes, is just simply bored) sees others' happiness and thinks life is being nice to everybody else but them, and they get super depressed about their own life.
Now I'm a bit too lazy to go search for those publications, but I heard from a trusted friend that there are studies out there that dug a bit deeper, and realized that people who just lurk and stalk tend to be less happy than people who actually share something on Facebook. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Ever heard of this saying that goes, "Shared grief is half the sorrow, but happiness when shared, is doubled."?
When someone feels bad about something and makes it heard on Facebook, no one should accuse them of simply "seeking attention", which sounds like it's a terrible thing. Every act of caring, every word of encouragement, no matter how small, could help them in that situation a whole lot. Maybe you should just try it. You'll notice that you will feel much less depressed about life, when you see that your friends care about your well-being.
For Bill, who might have friends that are geographically separated from him, Facebook is a great way to show them that he always cares, and to let his friends care back for him. It makes the hard task of defying distance a bit easier.
The Bottom Line
Sometimes I have a feeling that people forget what Facebook really is. A social network. A platform to connect people. It's that simple. How each person chooses to use that platform to connect is their business, and we need to not judge each other by that. Just like how we should not judge each other by our origin, our skin color, our sexual orientation, our outer appearance or what we wear, what we eat, what music we like, what our hobbies are, etc. (I can write a whole new blog entry about this topic, too...)
Now we all know that Bill in this text and I are quite similar. If there were not for social networking platforms, I wouldn't be able to maintain a stable relationship with half of my current friends. And that would be a great, great shame.
I think it's fun to see a picture of my friends in Ho Chi Minh city, who experience the coldest winter yet and actually had to buy thick scarfs for the first time in their lives. I am happy to know that a long-time buddy who is studying abroad in the U.S. just graduated, and I am still happy even if my "Congratulations!" is buried under a hundred other comments. I'm thrilled to see a picture of a friend and her newborn daughter who live only a couple of hundred kilometers away in another German city, but I still can't visit them anytime soon. I'm excited to be inspired by the travelling pictures of a friend who broke free into the world for the first time in her life, and to be able to visually accompany her through her journey. And yes, I am also glad to see what that friend in Korea usually eats, or to see that one Australian friend of mine to have recovered from his heartbreak and is smitten with his new girlfriend.
One could argue that those relationships are too shallow. I agree that picking up the phone to call someone is better than just liking a post on Facebook. But a person only has so much time and energy in a day, can anybody call every single one of their friends regularly? There are only a few you can catch up on with frequently. You should do that, I am doing it. But I'd rather be involved in my other friends' lives in form of Facebook likes and comments than not being in their lives at all. The same applies to their involvement in my life.
That's what Facebook should be used for. To make connections between people easier. If you're the type who values connections and think that distance should pose no obstacle to sustaining them, you would know to appreciate social networks like Facebook. And if you're the type who likes sharing and genuinely care about your friends, I can't imagine why you would hate that first-snow picture that Bill posts. I know I don't. :)
