“And so I quit…”
In the past, my feelings toward Facebook and similar social networking sites had swung between a genuine sense of connection and community to the uncomfortable awareness that what all of our blogs, online journals and personal profiles really amounted to was serious narcissism. As my feelings of over-exposure continued to mount, the obvious solution would have been to set limits on my Facebook time – yet I still found myself sucked in for longer periods every time I visited. In part, it was the hundreds of little links to and hints about other people’s lives that kept me coming back. But even more addicting were the never-ending possibilities to introduce, enhance and reveal more of myself…
…In the end, what does all this online, arms-length self-promotion ultimately provide? Perhaps it’s merely one component of the pursuit to alleviate some of the blackness encountered in the existential vacuum of modern life. As Schopenhauer once projected, modern humans may be doomed to eternally vacillate between distress and boredom. For the vast majority of people experiencing the fragmented, fast-paced modern world of 2008, a Sunday pause at the end of a hectic week may cause them to become all too aware of the lack of content in their lives. So we update our online profiles and tell ourselves that we are reaching out…
–http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/80/quit_facebook.html
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I wonder what Schopenhauer would have thought of our crazy hectic lives… he apparently lived a fairly simple and structured existence. He produced such profound ideas on perception, among other things, yet was such a man of his own time, holding ideas we’d find quaint or even offensive on some topics.
Anyway…. there was an article in last weeks Economist (my standard airplane reading) on professional networking sites, which pointed out that the difference between those and social networking sites is that the former are populated largely by people with very little time, while the latter are the reverse…. lots of people with an excess of time. It’s more specific and detailed than that, but I don’t have it handy right now. Still, it reminded me why I avoid the Myspace/Facebook thing.
Not that the other computer-related things I already spend too much time on matter any more than that, it’s just easier to pretend that they do.