By Hope Bowser
Western Sun staff writer
Myspace is ruining your relationship. Facebook is diminishing your chance at any genuine, social interaction. And Twitter is, well, just plain annoying. I hate to say it people, but these “social networking sites” are nothing more than A) a complete technological realization of one’s inherent arrogance, or B) an attempt at keeping in touch with those people who you really don’t care about in the real world, but feel some sort of obligation to at least pretend to.
Using Facebook as a ‘valuable method of communication’ is merely a facade; face it people- would you really have sent that happy birthday comment had the site not so conveniently reminded you? And if friend number 107’s birthday were worth remembering, wouldn’t you at least have their phone number for a text?
Besides the fact that these sites diminish basically all legitimate social interaction, when a romantic relationship is thrown into the mix, it becomes a platform for insecurity. Because, obviously, it’s a completely rational, even productive use of time to scour your hunny’s “friends” for anyone that might be found slightly desirable, and then proceed to Facebook-stalk them accordingly.
Or, if stalking someone else’s page and viewing their 72 pictures of themselves isn’t stimulating enough, you could always upload some more of yourself… because the six albums already up totally don’t show your hotness enough.
But hey, at least you aren’t like those people who have 30 pictures of their cat and random nature shots but none of themselves.
And those random status updates? They serve as a modern day consummation of Lacan’s mirror stage and the Ideal-I; we live in a post-The Hills, reality TV obsessed society where we assume really, genuinely cares about everything that we do.
It’s simply being considerate to quench everyone’s thirst for your whereabouts with a steady stream of updates about what you’re doing right this minute! But they don’t care. And they probably aren’t going to in five minutes, either. But have fun playing Farmville! : ) : )
