For years I had a wooden mail box complete with a metal plate attached that read ‘no junk mail’. Thus junk mail was simply not a reality in my life. Then some local teens decided to launch a campaign of ’shock and awe’ against my letter box, from which it never recovered. I then installed a brand spanking new metal box, complete with the obligatory ‘no junk mail’ sticker. However a few months later the effects of rain and weather caused my junk mail sticker to fall off and since then I have been assaulted with an avalanche of junk mail trying to sell me all kinds of products I don’t care about. The volume is simply staggering, I am sure that the amazon basin is crying as these brochures are delivered into my letter box. However I am now facing a new kind of junk mail.
I am not sure if it is the new layout of facebook or the continuing growth of twitter but I starting to feel as if I am being overrun by psychic junk mail. I find facebook like many technologies can be used for both good and bad. It is great to connect with friends in other parts of the world, or to send messages and mail quickly. However I have noticed that more and more people are using their status updates to tell me things which to be completely blunt, I simply don’t care about.
Some people use twitter and status updates to communicate things that are of importance, they act as ‘info editors’ pointing people in the direction of interesting events, links and issues. However such people are a small minority. Increasingly I am being swamped as I am sure as many of you are with inane comments that read like this,
Frank: I just cooked my two minute noodles for three minutes not two, now they are too sloppy
Hector loves puppies
Mary just watched family guy and it was really funny, she is now going to the cupboard for cookies YUM!!!!!!
Count Zinzendorf just got his trousers dirty changing a flat tire
I am sorry but I simply do not care. That is not to say that I do not care about you. I have enough trouble with wading through the minutiae of my own life, than to be bombarded with the mundane machinations of your existence.Just as I am sure that you don’t need to know boring details of my life, such as the fact that today I have a hay-fever rash from mowing the lawn on my shoulder, or that soon I will buy a chicken sandwich for lunch with avocado and cheese. These are boring details that I won’t even bother my wife with because I know that she will simply not care, not because she does not love me, but because such realities are irrelevant! Knowing about my rash and my choice of sandwich will add nothing to your life on this mortal coil.
The problem is when you log into your facebook and are confronted not with one or two such comments but thirty or forty, it becomes overwhelming. We are already facing information overload without all of these irrelevant personal broadcasts. Don’t get me wrong I am more than happy to hear from you if you have something interesting to share such as,
Fred has just invented a perpetual motion machine
Igor has just brokered a lasting peace deal between Israel and Hammas
Sue has just conclusively proven the identity of Jack the Ripper
Peter has exhumed the corpse of Elvis and is being pursued by a murderous mob of fans through the streets of Memphis
You see the thing that disturbs me most about all of this, is the question this raises about what this says about our self identity or should I say self obsession.Do we really think that people will be interested us in the way that people seem to be interested in the everyday activities of celebrities? The image that comes to my head when I think of all of this is of a man walking out of his house into the street and shouting at the top of his voice to his neighbours and friends that he is going to have a cheese sandwich, four hours later he comes out again into the night air and again screams another announcement to the street “I just watched a documentary about Whales… it was ok I guess!” If someone did this in your street you would think them insane, however this is effectively what status updates and twitter does.
Yes but you say I am only updating my ‘friends’ on what I am doing. Yes that argument works if you have somewhere around 12 facebook friends, the amount of people that we can effectivly maintain deep relationships with. Go above that number and you are treading in the waters of acquaintance, go above a hundred and you talking distant contacts, go above two hundred friends and you are talking that weird goth guy who sat behind you in English literature class who you had forgotten had existed until he added you. Facebook is great for keeping in contact with such people, but really, do three hundred people who have met you need to know that you are playing X-box with Damo?
We instead of broadcasting need to recallibrate our sense of self. We need to rediscover the lost art of humility, to understand our place in the world. Instead of dreaming up new status updates to get you through the day, mediate upon the truly freeing thought that the world does not revolve around us.
More articles like this
How twitter is destroying language and conversation
Tags: Facebook, narcissim, self obsession, status update, Twitter
