My Experiment with Facebook
I have been reading a whole lot on social media lately (read Facebook in this case) and how it makes you feel more unhappy and miserable and does not serve much of a social purpose. Or that you are suffering from Selfie or TMI overload (Too Much Information). Or maybe you are complaining about the lack of Facebook Etiquettes that some of your friends might have. Or maybe you are one among them.
My thoughts in this case, this could be true depending on where Facebook really stood in your scheme of things. Yes, most of us would want to portray a positive image, share happy thoughts, happy moments and project a happier and of course more beautiful self to the world. Why not right? Why would you want to turn your bad hair day into a profile pic? And why would you really want the world to know “You had a bad month/year/phase” or “You are having trouble coping up with work-related stress and really feel like killing….” ..err…well… the point is, why would you want to share these thoughts with your social network? Who wants to sit next to Mr. Mopey Moperson and weep anyway? We all know, share happiness and cry alone, at least when it comes to ‘going public’, Facebook or no Facebook.
In order to find out for myself where Facebook really stood in my life I did a little experiment of my own. Thanks to internet, social-media and micro-blogging we can all call ourselves anthropologists, researchers and analyst (in whatever field) as long as we have something meaningful to say.
I chose a time in my life which was particularly slow. By slow I mean, no interesting “check-ins”, “status-updates”, “life-events”, “profile pics”, “cover photos” to update my Facebook page to. In social-media terms that means I was already invisible to the world. I decided to embrace this invisibility by de-activating my Facebook profile and going completely off it. This was my way of being even with my social world. If I don’t have anything interesting to share I would not want to see anything interesting going on around either that could potentially make me feel like a looser.(I sense opinions being formed here. But hold-on and keep reading. I have something meaningful coming up).
I had a tough task at hand here — with nothing interesting to update on Facebook, a slow actual life and with the newly acquired Facebook invisibility, an even slower virtual life — which meant, I actually had a huge responsibility in front of me. YES, LIVE a REAL life. Create actual moments in life that would make my life REAL, interesting and worthwhile. Considering how much I had been relying on Mark Zuckerberg and his empire to do this for me in the confines of my office cube (shhh) or my cozy little apartment, it felt like a humongous task ahead of me. Oh but exciting nevertheless.
As the saying goes, when the student is ready to learn, the teacher appears. And, when you are ready to live, life starts happening. With so much Facebook time reclaimed and the pressure to make the most of that time I started thinking more clearly and tangibly, putting in efforts to make the most of my days. Eventually I saw the thought, time and effort materializing into meaningful stuff like a good list of books to read, some interesting new songs to work on, more food for thought and more thought into action in the form of emails, blogs, articles, etc. or finding interesting book-shops, creative events to go to, etc. In all this, I lost track of what my friends were upto which made me really think about them once in a while and even reach out via emails, messages, phone calls (yes, this was an achievement considering how anxious I usually get talking over the phone). I even got an opportunity to meet some of them and have a FACE-TO-FACE conversation! Whoa! So far so good, it was all working out.
But now, I also had an added responsibility of making sure I had some more accessible friends that I could meet in person and talk to, reach-out to, meaning a real social network. I started being more ‘present’ in conversations with actual people and was surprised at how much people need and appreciate having real people around them. Conversations with people at work, at the local barista, public places, volunteer events, work socials, etc. gave me a chance to get insights on the real world living and breathing around me. NOW I had a real social network!
My little experiment started seeming even more worthwhile after I got surprise messages, texts and phone calls from my virtual yet close friends from far away to know what I had been upto! They missed me! That felt great!
Oh wait. But what about some other friends that I had lost along with my virtual social network? They were important too! So what if they did not notice I was invisible? I missed them! I wanted to know what was going on in their lives across other continents of the world! Facebook was how we were connected after all these years. That was how I knew what they had for lunch/dinner, what their families looked like, how they had decorated their homes and what flowers they had in their yards! I did not want to miss out on that! And I also wanted to make sure they knew what was going on in mine now that life was really happening to me.
That is when I realized where Facebook really stood in my scheme of things! A-Ha!
And just like that I made a re-appearance on Facebook as silently as I had disappeared. And there, 177 birthday messages after all (I re-appeared on my birthday in case you get into logistics of how I got messages when I had de-activated my account!)! My virtual world still very much remembered me, at least on my birthday!
And now, after my little experiment, here is what I think. I think Facebook is my very own little scrapbook. I would like to keep it updated with all the things that make me happy. All the people that make me smile. All the tiny bits and pieces that make my life meaningful. All the moments I want to remember far into the ‘ever-after’. And if you are reading this, it means I want YOU in it too!
Happy Facebooking!!
Originally published at https://www.facebook.com.
