Friday, June 27, 2008

Why Facebook and Myspace are such huge time drains for me

People are so neat. I'm always really interested in them--I want to understand what motivates them, why they feel the way they feel, how they ended up where they are, why they make the choices they do. The cool thing about Facebook and Myspace is finding people that you haven't seen for like 15 years or something and looking at them now, all grown up, having a job, having their own family. You get little bits of all the answers about them. It's not at all like real friendship, but it is nice. It is well-intentioned. These sites get a lot of flak, and I always feel like I'm supposed to be sort of embarrassed about cruising all over them like I do. But it's so nice to see wedding pictures of the people you cared so deeply about in high school and never thought you'd fall out of touch with but did. It's wonderful to be able to feel your tiny, idealistic teenage hopes for them realized in a tiny, idealistic little way.

I missed being able to explore my curiosity about people for the four years I was with the disturbed ex-boyfriend. I am making up for lost time--making new friends, spending more time with old friends, exploring the wonderful and complex Jam Guy, Facebook-ing and Myspace-ing like a twelve-year-old.

I am in a perfect field for someone who is deeply curious about people--a field where I am expected to question, pursue, probe, listen closely to what's said and listen more closely to what's not said. I literally listen to the insides of people--their bowels, their lungs, their hearts. I peer inside their mouths and at pictures they bring me of small fissures in their ribs, unbalanced spaces between their vertebrae. I poke at their ears. I study their rashes and eruptions like some people read bestselling novels. I am riveted by lengthy descriptions of every kind of substance that can emerge from the human body; I ask for more and more detail.

Like exploring a social networking site, it is not all that dignified all the time. But it is SO satisfying.

1 comment:

Jennica Goo said...

heh..that and you can play online GAMES with your friends. oh, procrastination... we're both becoming so good at it.

and, undignified? I beg to differ. I think this is a much better form of stalking than going to the main office and looking up the stalkee's schedule. ;)