Why I Hate Facebook (and why I can't stop using it)

About every two months I deactivate my facebook account, and then after two months I log into it again. This seems to be rather bi-polar, but if you knew me, it would not seem odd considering my personality. Why such a love/hate relationship with this social-networking interface?


Facebook is a poor substitute for face-to-face communication. It bears resemblance to all other reduced, but necessary and convenient forms of communication (such as the letter, the telephone, the e-mail, and the text message). However, I actually prefer all of these communication media to facebook. I can't explain why, but I seem to find all of them useful and convenient. I even find facebook useful, but maybe not convenient, and I certainly find it annoying. "Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life." This is their motto on their homepage before you log in or sign up. I don't personally find it true. I find facebook to be a vain, byte-sized, hyper-reduced medium of social interaction in which we fool ourselves into thinking that we are connecting, when we really are just participating in a pretentious electronic interface. The name itself is deceiving: facebook. While we interact with avatars of our faces, we don't really see each other.


I spend too much time on facebook. Don't get me wrong. I don't spend hours a day. Maybe 2-3 hours per week. To me this is excessive. Why? Well, you see, within about five minutes I'm done responding to every single "notification" and I've finished "liking" and commenting on all my friends' new statuses, which I don't find particularly enlightening or interesting anyways. I don't suppose they find mine to be of much interest either. After that, I waste anywhere from 5-30 minutes doing nothing useful or accomplishing little communication - in other words, wasting my time. So, really, for me it boils down to a lack of self-control and a misdirected endeavor to fulfill the desire for human interaction. To be fair, I do end up chatting with people on facebook during most sessions. But have you ever noticed how incredibly time-consuming one chat session can be? A five-minute conversation can take a half-hour! How absurd.


Most of my closest friends use facebook very little. Or, at least less than I do. Or, at least less than I used to. I mean that it has not helped me to connect with the people most important to me. Nor does it help me connect with the people who are less important to me, or with my long-distance friends. If I want to connect with these folks, I call them or visit them in person. Facebook does not suffice for me to communicate well with the people I love.


I don't have a PC. So I have to leave home to find a public computer in order to "connect" with people. Couldn't I just call them on the telephone?


I find it creepy that anyone of my friends can see what I "publish." So I have changed my privacy settings where only my "close" friends can view my status updates and other things I "post." I will most likely also go through and delete many of my "friends" (or maybe I won't). Let's be real: I don't have 681 friends; not in real life. Maybe 681 acquaintances, but to call them friends feels like a lie to me.


To be fair, let me explain why I like text messages. I find them to be unobtrusive. If I have a matter that is not urgent, I like to send a text message rather than make a phone call, which can feel over-dramatic in our age when texting is so commonplace and acceptable. When I text my friends, they get it immediately (or nearly immediately), whereas they have to "check" facebook to see what I've "communicated" to them. Also, when I am at work it is better for me to send a text than to make a call, and certainly more convenient than using facebook (I don't have web service on my cell phone).
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Why I don't stop using facebook (or why I haven't permanently deleted my account). 1) I somewhat appreciate the "event" feature, which enables you to easily invite as many friends as you like to whatever event you may be planning. This feature also keeps me up to date with and invited to my friends' events. 2) I hope to use facebook in the future to promote my music, but I haven't finished recording yet. 3) People in my life think I'm being prudish by despising facebook. Perhaps at first I was being prudish. But now I feel I have genuinely come to dislike the entire enterprise. Nevertheless, people whom I love dearly appreciate when I use facebook, so I am peer-pressured into using it.

Who knows? Maybe one of these days I will permanently delete my account, or have enough self-control to keep it deactivated for a very long time. As for now, I will most likely bounce back and forth between the two poles of facebook activity and deactivation.

Hopes and Points of Interest

I have some new, some old ideas (hopes) for my blog . . . things I would like to post mostly for my own benefit, rather than trying to attain or please any type of readership. I want to post things that will aid me in making progress in intellectual goals. Here I am not trying to make any promises to myself, but to set forth ideas for experimentation at least:

+ Latin translations of western patristic material, such as Augustine, Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. Hopefully more ideas to come.

+ Notes on what I'm reading and critical questions.

+ Direct quotes from books, hopefully to be used later in research and writing.

+ Thoughts on the theology and life of the Orthodox Church.

+ As usual, the occasional story from my life.

Like I said, I'm hoping to make no promises to myself here, but just put down some ideas for things to post that would help me accomplish some intellectual goals.

Peace to all.