From what I can tell, September 25, 2007 marks the date that I joined FaceBook. Back then our posts were written in the third person, a tactic I loved and still miss. It’s just so much easier to deal with myself in the third person. Crazy people do that, some say. [Alan shrugs.] As for the rest of FaceBook, I’ve taken part and engaged in it mostly on my own terms. Even when they censor my ass – or my dick as is more often the case – I still do exactly what I want within the scope of its admittedly-limited parameters. (I let all of it hang out on this website, so you’ve come directly to the source.)
Twelve years of anything is a substantial chunk of time, and in social media time it feels even longer. There was a time when FaceBook provided a destination and diversion unto itself, particularly in the early years, and a nifty way to cross-promote online projects and such. (To this day, its main function, for my purposes, is to alert people to a new blog post here.) For those without their own personal website, it also could act as a sort of mini-website, where photos and notes and communications could eventually come to coalesce into a monument to oneself. A repository of items that, taken together, comprised a body of work that stood up as some Frankensteinian effigy. Everybody could be a star. Yet in the very egalitarian act of allowing each of us a platform, it worked to negate itself. Everyone was still no one, we just all had bigger megaphones to shout about ourselves. Still, substance and consistency would win out in the end, and quality users who maintained a modicum of originality and interesting content have sustained themselves.
At this point, my use of FaceBook is somewhat limited. I always enjoy seeing what my real-life friends are doing or planning or thinking. In an age where phone calls long ago died out and face-to-face meetings are a quaint thing of the past, FaceBook is where most of us go to keep up with friends and family who have found their way to the periphery of our lives. (And a very welcome reminder of when everyone’s birthday is – the most life-saving feature of FaceBook.) With other social media diversions such as Twitter and Instagram taking up my time – both of which require far less concentration and follow-up – I’m no longer quite as engaged on FaceBook as I once was. That sort of ennui actually bleeds into all of online life of late, which is a much healthier stance, and makes for a much happier countenance. It’s also a sign of summer, when outdoor enchantments take precedence over a computer screen. Fall will shift that a bit, so perhaps it’s time for a FaceBook Renaissance. And perhaps it’s not…
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