Where Are All My Friends?
I was an odd sixteen-year-old. I was nerdy, closeted, eccentric, shy, I had no idea how to handle my gangly frame or my unruly auburn hair, I cared way too much of what people thought of me, and, most importantly, I had zero game. I was a scared-shitless teenager, flailing about, one week pretending to be a soccer jock, the next a math nerd, the next a dropout concert freak, desperately looking for some semblance of an identity.
To be cool — that was the only thing that mattered. Everything I did was in service of that objective. That’s how every high school works; bizarre fads come spreading through school like a viral wave, everyone taking this newfound craze as scripture, only for it to pass unassumingly two weeks later. At my high school, for example, ass-slapping became utterly ubiquitous for some inexplicable reason. You couldn’t walk five steps down the hall without having to avoid some classmate’s well-timed spank on your way to pre-calc. The soar rear-ends complained and quickly a level playing field was demanded, thus a warning clap rule came into effect and from then on the slapper had to clap before commencing a slap and the slap-ee now had a split-second chance to avoid the oncoming wallop. And so a cacophony of claps and smacks became the everyday background noise of our hallowed halls. Nobody knew why we did this, it simply became an adolescent bylaw, a collective disregard for our buttocks because we all, admittedly, wanted to seem just a little bit cooler.
So, there I was, living this acne-filled adolescence in the midwest, minding my own business (or rear-end more accurately), following the current fads (Myspace, Neopets, quoting Napolean Dynamite left and right, etc.) when this new little thing called Facebook came along. I had only heard whispers of it beforehand; my cousin in college had a facebook before high schoolers were even allowed and I remember catching glimpses of her computer at Thanksgiving. I didn’t know why, but I wanted one. However, in September of 2006, when it became available to anyone over the age of 13 with a valid email address, I suddenly found myself with that aforementioned desire to be cool, and I held out. I didn’t sign up. I don’t even remember why. I’m sure someone I had a crush on off-handedly mentioned how much he hated it, and consequently, I refused to enlist out of solidarity like it was the Vietnam War all over again. Eventually, though, I came around (he probably smelt my desperation and moved on) and I joined Facebook on April 24th, 2007. I was a sophomore in high school.
In the beginning, it was fairly simple. I added a couple of baby pictures to start. My first profile picture was a photo of me at three years old with a big head of red hair, an oversized blue tee, and big red aviators. I kept it for several years, again, to project some small-minded originality. I filled my profile with quotes and irony, my likes and tastes (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Arcade Fire, Of Montreal, The Flaming Lips, Shrek, the usual American-teenage-aughts-fare, etc.), and began poking away.
In those early days, Facebook was just another opportunity to try out those teenage identities; my profile was a new place I could accessorize my life. Instead of fashion choices, I had Farmville, and bumper stickers, and Facebook Groups like “The Cold Side of the Pillow.” I could try on these different personalities all the while checking out the identities that my friends were cultivating on their profiles. I had my wall where people would post things like:
“yep
have you been like away in iceland or somehting?
ihavent seen you at school in 4328904358430958430958439085
years it is a tragedy”
- Clare Louis to Tommy Bernardi
June 2, 2007
Or it was a real live therapy couch where I would share my deepest feelings about the big questions in life, such as:
“sad cause everyone is out town”
- Tommy Bernardi
June 23, 2007
More than anything it was an extension of my social life. I would check other people’s profiles, curate my own, check my crush’s relationship status, leave messages, poke — you know, high school stuff. It didn’t replace anything, it only expanded it. It was never very serious, and, more than anything, it was just fun. We were just kids after all.
Today though, I am twenty-nine years old. Twelve years have passed since that lonely summer afternoon. That disaster of a teenager is still in me somewhere, deep down, flailing under some old history assignments, but I guess I’ve learned how to manage him a bit better. I’m now forming a career, furthering my education, building a life one piece at a time — you know, adult stuff. But, of course, Facebook is still there, I still have my profile, I still write to people, like witty posts, comment on photos. I, admittedly, haven’t poked anyone in years (hopefully a sign of my growing self-assurance). But, in truth, Facebook has become a fact of life. Facebook is ubiquitous.
I do much less active Facebook stalking, and more passive consumption of this river of all these perfectly curated happy lives. This passive river is new. In the beginning, I had to actively stalk through profiles — that was all Facebook was: profiles. If you weren’t friends, you couldn’t get past your own page. The only options were active communication. Today though, so much of the Facebook experience is easy, it takes no effort, just habit.
I look at Facebook differently now; what was once a tool, an extension, good fun, has now become something else: a place. Facebook is now a real place where things really happen. It gives our lives legitimacy — did your 80’s house party really happen if you didn’t capture it in Instagram stories? I feel an obligation to participate in these places, to share my feelings, to fill this virtual river with me. Facebook originally had goals to connect and bring people together, but it no longer cares about the quality of those connections, rather, like all for-profit companies, its primary preoccupation is quantity. Now, I don’t fault these companies for that — it’s only natural — but, rather, I fault myself for not seeing the change in how I use their services. I should take a second look at myself and how I use these sites — is this what I really want?
Even now, there are new questions over these companies’ true motives and responsibilities, and whether or not these virtual places are destroying our democracies with the rampant spread of misinformation and fake news, and the ease with which bad players can subvert the system. In a post-Cambridge Analytica world, we should all be having much more complex discussions about the power these companies hold and whether they have the ethical fortitude to bear that responsibility. But, then, in all of that whirlwind, there’s me, and you, and almost everyone else, who keep liking and sharing and scrolling, mostly out of habit. It’s what we do now.
Now, of course, some still don’t use social media or others even who, like addicts in recovery, previously had taken part, but have since called it quits. Are these people the irrelevant grandfathers of the 21st century, the hipsters who have rediscovered the beauty of vinyl or those aforementioned recovering addicts? Maybe a bit of all three. That being said, they are probably making the right choice. But, whether we like it or not, our lives will get more and more virtual, as technology gets more and more powerful, and sooner or later we’ll have to deal with that reality.
Truth be told, I’m a fairly weak social media user; I use Facebook (mostly to consume, rarely do I post), I use Instagram (mostly as an amateur photographer), I check Twitter maybe twice a month (to follow my funniest friends), but I don’t live very much in this virtual space, I mostly consume. And I’m fine. I feel healthy, for the most part. I’ve accepted that FOMO is the natural order of 2019.
I wish I didn’t need it though — in writing this piece I’ve become even more aware of that desire — I do wish I could quit it all. I wish our social lives didn’t rely so heavily on it. And maybe that’s what we all should be doing: more critically investigating how we use these sites, whether passively or actively. It’s okay to want to be cool — isn’t that what we all want? But we shouldn’t let ourselves be prisoners to that desire, paralyzed under a roaring river of social media. Maybe at some point, I’ll find the balls to pull the plug, but, until then, I guess I’ll keep scrolling my way to happiness.
