Chapter Seventeen: The Facebook Connection (~jinghan)

“Hi, do you have an email address? I’m trying something crazy and daring: life without facebook. Wish me luck. Jinghan.”

I send this message to a dozen facebook friends that I don’t have the email address off – most of them people I’ve met since uni started. It is safe to say that facebook has taken over any other sort of communication, even the online list on instant messaging has dwindled in the shadow of facebook. Even my least internet-addicted friends were somehow swindled into getting a facebook account.

But to what benefit? There were some people in my facebook friend list that I hadn’t contacted for months, years even – except maybe to add them on facebook. I mourned the replacement of long interesting conversations on instant messaging, that were now replaced by short replies to wall-posts. And those horrible facebook invites, that don’t make you feel very invited at all because they’re stacked against the X society ball, Y society cruise and Z society AGM that you can’t remember signing up for.

“You must rebel!” cried the contrary side of me, and so I sat down one afternoon, (ironically) spent more time on facebook than I had for a long time , and messaged friends (individually, in order to reassert my rebelliousness) for their email addresses. I even got rid of the handy bookmarks link to facebook. (Only to discover that all I have to type is “f” into the address bar for facebook to be suggested as the top link.)

It was still an inspiring idea at this point.

But then all the impracticalities of my plan started to surface:

If I was being stingy with my phone bill, how would I get a quick message across to someone?

Would I have to make people go out of their way to arrange a meet up that includes me?

Or would they just be too lazy to include me at all?

Do people check their emails as often as facebook?

Do I want all my social messages mix in among all the uni obligatory emails?

Would it be too intimidatingly formal to email someone I’ve only just made the acquaintance of?

And to tell the truth, many acquaintances blossomed into friendships when mutual loneliness led us both to facebook at a ridiculous hour of the night. As many long interesting messages have be exchanged on facebook as through emails. As many interesting conversations have been conducted on facebook as on instant messaging or face-to-face. And, apart from the guilt of having to click the “ignore” button on a high percentage of events every week (there’s more events than hours in a day) there’s nothing wrong with occasionally going to an event where you’ll be forced to mix with strangers.

“You’re still basically a facebook virgin,” said one particular friend. And yeah, I’m not so addicted to facebook that it eats away too much time (except when I spend hours trying to justify my choice of disconnecting from facebook.) Actually my emails eat away more of my time than facebook.

So why I was rebelling against something that doesn’t even affect me personally?

I can’t remember.

After all Facebook, may just be where you really get to know people you’ve only just introduced your name and course to when you ran into them at uni; so long as you actually make an effort to read and type in turn. It may be where common lunch times, common interests, mutual friends are revealed.

A little “1” in a red bubble begs my attention on the top of the facebook page. “Hey, did you get a really weird answer to question three on the V Calc assignment?”

And I still have not severed my connection to facebook…