Facebook is dying

Facebook is dying. I am not talking about numerical issues that I assume to be thriving — recent surveys by industry experts confirm this because FB holds 77% of social network traffic, along with its sister companies Messenger, Whatsapp, and Instagram. The giant of Harward which characterized these years is fading into what is the essence of the socialization and virtual interaction. Facebook is a container of personal data and information, of existences entrusted to the web so that they do not remain forgotten. We are all involved in an alleged immortality.

In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes. The prophecy cleverly recycled by Andy Warhol is outdated. FB offers notoriety and does so whenever we need to make it know that we exist, in a constant, illusory, collective need.

Publishing selfies, reflections, and parables become an entertainment that gets sublimation when we check for approvals and follow up. And we do not admit it, but we regret to go unnoticed. An event makes sense only if it is immortalized and even the relationships are affected by just one application present on a telephone. Whoever doesn’t install it, is out of the game.

Facebook is the story of a novel, our own. It is our existence told by ourselves that lack of neutrality. It is the ideal life that we want to show, hiding the worst and showing trophies for the posterity.

We are Facebook as well, we are the use we make of it. FB is dying because when you post messages addressed to the dead, do you expect a response from the dead? And when you turn to your cat, do you think it understands? When your child mimics your duckface, are you satisfied? Keyboard dilatation, of course that makes FB a necessary uselessness.

Now, save money: Mattioli, why do you have a Facebook account then?

Let me be clear, I write about FB and its bad use because I am certainly not better than others. I have spread the web with personal profiles with the hidden excuse that having an activity, I mate promotional use of it. I am feeding this cemetery for living ones by uploading pictures and epitaphs, where everyone plays and sings about themselves, trying to catch the interest of others by winkling or provoking, flaunting quotes that are fashion.

I am at the end of the line, yet I remain anchored to an old principle that is currently losing the race: when you have nothing to say, say nothing.

In other words, mine is just a declaration of awareness.

Originally published at www.enricomattioli.com on November 23, 2017.