Identity Crisis

Hello World,

Facebook is a site of images, everywhere you click there’s an image. The home page takes you to a news feed, full of images. Click on your best friends profile and you’ll find even more images, click on your own photo album and instantly all 567 photos of you pop up ready to be viewed by anyone who has time to kill or who is stalking you, or perhaps both. Now being the investigative journalist that I am, I did a little research on the history of Facebook and I found that Facebook’ s predecessor, “Facemash” was originally created at Harvard and its’ purpose served to link a student profile with a student picture, which was not legal at the time at Harvard. To find out that Facebook was created in a college dorm was information that both fascinated and frightened me. Much like everyone else I had always assumed that Facebook had always existed like God or cheese and  even if I did accept the fact that Facebook is not greater than time I figured it spawned from a black hole or was created in some great galactic collision. Anyways skip foreword a couple of years,  and “Facemash” became “Facebook”, and “Facebook” became a site littered with its users photographs, dominating internet traffic.

So now you must be asking yourself “what is the point of his ramblings?” My point is this: does a profile picture or photo album accurately reflect its user? Does a site committed to representing its users accurately really accomplish this mission? Simply put no. In my research I tried to examine my friends Facebook accounts, more specifically their photos, in order to determine whether or not these sites truly encapsulated their personality. My research lead me to the conclusion that Facebook is essentially one massive façade of social imagery. This occurs when people are not accurately represented by their Facebook because they control what is posted on there site thusly anyone can essentially form their own image to be who ever they want to be. If I wanted to be a beer chugging frat boy I could, all I would have to do is post the appropriate pictures and statuses to fit that image, and just like that I am the newest member of Animal House. Any person is capable of crafting any image on Facebook they so desire; thusly no image on Facebook can be taken as a legitimate representation. In this light every picture on Facebook means something, every picture that goes on Facebook must be examined in the context of what image it is trying to be created, what is this picture saying about a person? In sum Facebook has now gone from a website that distracted me from my schoolwork to the catalyst for my examination of self-image. Who knew Facebook could give me this much of a headache?

Mission Satement Impossible

Its 3:00 am on a Wednesday night and I haven’t started my essay on the political state of the European Union. The paper will make up thirty percent of my semester grade. I guess “whoops” doesn’t really cover this one does it? But wait! There’s good news! I have two thousand friends on Facebook and the girl from the last week’s party friended me, score.

          
 How many times have you been in this very scenario? You're suppose to be doing something of pressing importance, perhaps a term paper, or maybe the eight weeks of math homework you didn’t do because the new Call of Duty game came out but instead of actually doing that important task, you found yourself on Facebook liking the status of a friend. How many times have you found yourself looking at the fantastic parties and events your friends are attending while you sit there and stare at the computer screen and think “If only I was that awesome…”. Facebook is smoke and mirrors my friends. Yes, I said it and George Orwell would be proud. Facebook is evil and there is no doubt about it, it killed Myspace and now it wants our GPA, but I say no!

           
“But Jake” you say, “How do you plan to defeat the evils of Facebook?” and my answer is this, I do not plan to eliminate Facebook from my life but rather I plan to research and dissect it. Over the next month, I intended to chronicle and analyze both my and my friend’s usage of Facebook, blogging the stories and the results of my research. I do not know what will come of this quest to truly find out what Facebook is and how it works, but I hope that by viewing Facebook in a objective manner I can some how obtain a better understanding of how its dark magic works and perhaps even neutralize its powers. In a sense I am a modern day Tom Wolfe, but instead of studying hippies and drugs, I’m studying a social networking site that eats people lives. So let it be known; Facebook I’m coming for you.

Check out the cast of the upcoming Facebook Movie.