I have no idea who this is
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about who I am, who I want to be and how wee little me fits into the bigger picture of our world. I’m 25, after all. It’s high time I had my quarter-life crisis.
The more I think, the more uncomfortable I become. I like to think I’m a friendly person, social, outgoing. But I’d just as soon dig my eyes out with a spoon as pick up the phone and call someone… just to chat. I can’t remember the last time I had an incoming call. I send birthday wishes and death condolences via Facebook and Twitter. I email my parents, text my boyfriend and tweet my every last mundane, mind-numbing thought to… strangers. When something good happens, my first thought isn’t, “Oh good,” it’s… “I gotta tweet that.” When something bad happens, I don’t even have a first thought. It’s already been shared, retweeted, “liked”…
I don’t think this makes me a bad person. It just makes me like all the other people… who are also not bad. We are products of our environment and it will come as a surprise to no one that we are all living increasingly tech-dependent lives the result of which, I’ve found, at least, has left me feeling rather lifeless.
And it’s not just online. I see this lifelessness everywhere. In the blank stare and plastic skin of a model photoshopped into oblivion…
I got it! Let's make her look dead... Great!
In the bizarre caricatures of real food seen in advertisements…
Fake it 'til they eat it.
In the frightening reshaping of human bodies in movies and commercials… [WATCH THAT VIDEO]
CTRL +ALT + BEEFCAKE
In the robot-esque sounds of all our favorite auto-tuned songs…
But what will Jason Derulo do with his time?
I see our world changing and it all just feels so… fake. So what am I going to do about it? I have no idea. I’ve hovered over the “delete” button on both Facebook and Twitter several times. But once that tie is cut, are you cut off from the rest of the world? Is it sad that I even have to ask that? Can you blame me?
Instant messaging really started to pick up steam when I was in high school, when I was in my pivotal formative years. Friendships, relationships and weekend plans were forged online. Then came cell phones… texting… My sophomore year of college, Facebook launched. Twitter took over post-graduation.
And while all of these things allow me to connect with more people than ever before, I feel more isolated than ever before.
Am I alone here?
I won’t deny that Facebook and Twitter have connected me to opportunities I wouldn’t have had and people I wouldn’t have known. But at what point is all just… too much?
Sweet Tater Blog 
For me, it seems to pose more positives than negatives. Sure, it requires very little effort to tell someone you were thinking about them electronically, but I think in this seemingly busier world, the person who receives the message doesn’t just brush it off.
I feel that as long as I have the relationships that I do interact with in person every so often, I’m okay with the digitizing of my life. It makes keeping in touch or gathering information a little easier.
When it comes to the magazines, advertisements, marketing, very annoying.
I think as long as you are aware of its impact on your life and how to not let it get out of hand, you’ll be okay. You as in more of a collective “we.”
When it comes to communication I agree that technology has gotten to be too much. I think the “youth” of today won’t even know how to correctly spell words let alone conduct themselves in a face-to-face job interview. On the radio the other day they were discussing whether it was ok to “text in sick” to work. It all results in a lack of accountability.
P.S. I can’t believe they photoshopped that girl’s hair in the first pic!
Hmm. I just got an iPhone a couple of weeks ago and I am glued to it. I am debating whether or not to join Twitter, and I can’t decide. Honestly, I used to love the way that I wasn’t connected and available most of the time and I kind of miss it already, even though all I have is a smartphone.
I don’t want to get too far into new technologies because I think they really do disconnect us from the moment. Thinking “I gotta tweet that” is sort of the opposite of mindfulness, no? And I think it’s different than thinking, “Hey, Person X would like this story”(which was common pre-technology)
Wow. What amazes me about the first one is how much YOUNGER that make her look. I knew they were photoshopping inches off people and remove every blemish, but it didn’t occur to me they were photoshopping away years too. This is definitely a DUH moment, but, wow.
Also, who is with the “food art” they photograph? Even kids pick up on the fact that their happy meal looks nothing like the picture!
In my line of work social media is a life saver. It keeps me connected to friends across the globe and helps me meet new friends locally.
I am sometimes too attached and have to step back. But the positives often outweigh the negatives.
I definitely can relate. It’s actually the reason I took a step back from the blogworld for a while. My friends and I lost touch after this summer, we all started new grad schools, new lives…me and 2 of my friends have just recently started doing “3 way phone calls” at lease once per week, and I am already feeling more energized and connected with those I care about the most. I think it will take little baby steps to get back to a place where the power of technology does not separate us so much. Great post.
just a note. i just found out this week that apparently facebook “launched” long before we got it at furman. my boyfriend went to vanderbilt and is two years ahead of us and he had it his freshman year. i feel so cheated and lied to.
so agree.
i had a droid for about 3 months, then switched back to my old phone without internet. Can’t tell you how much better I feel because of it!!! Someone once said that they like/ wanna hangout with their twitter friends more than their fb friends… and that is sad but true too.
kinda scared about the future of technology!
Have definitely experienced your first line, but not your technology struggle (given my unpublished age!) and have a thot. Just read this: “You find yourself in the midst of a crisis wondering if this is all there is…Is there anything worth living for? Sometimes this crisis is solved by moving from success to significance…We want to make a difference, to make our lives count. We hope it’s not too late. Every day we move a bit closer to death and a lot farther from birth. Hope is the fuel through which we create the future. We’re all on a quest for intimacy, for meaning, for our destiny. Our souls crave love and faith and hope. We are all searching for what our souls long for, and we will be satisfied only in God.” (Erwin Raphael McManus)
I feel the same way sometimes. I hate talking on the phone, so I communicate via email and tweets and texts. Sometimes I get burned out, and that’s why I detach from it all on the weekends.
That said, I think Twitter and blogging and technology in general has helped me build relationships I wouldn’t have. I’d still hate talking on the phone, but I’d have no other way of connecting with others.
I feel like I am the ONLY blogger out there who has neither facebook or twitter. It’s lovely. I don’t have to worry about always checking my different internet sites to see what is going on. I don’t feel tied down to anything and I think you would feel more free. Plus, you learn to focus on who is actually really important to you instead of trying to maintain a million different relationships that you could do without.
it just comes down to whether it’s affecting you more negatively or positively.
i never got into twitter because honestly i think it’s inane. why have we never bothered to share our every thought about everything before? it’s because *no one cares*. if something truly interesting & worth sharing happens in your life, isn’t it a hundred million times better to share it in a conversation (or a blog post!) rather than squeeze it in a 140 character snippet?
facebook i found to be useful for a long time. i have friends all over the world to stay in touch with, it’s the best way to find out about local events and get photos after going out with friends. but then i realized how fake and meaningless it all was – i was sick of a newsfeed that gave me too much information about people i don’t care about, or sometimes didn’t even know! and i haaate that there are no privacy settings to give you the option to block that out.
and then i realized hey, if i want to keep in touch with my REAL friends it’ll be through exchanging photos & updates through email, not through status updates. if there is an event i really will have fun at then it’s because my REAL friends tell me about it and we go together, not through a mass invite. if i need photos from a night with friends, my friend will lend me their camera to upload them to my computer! as for everyone and everything else… screw it. they are meaningless to me so why am i bothering to stay connected? so i deleted my facebook.
i have maybe 10-15 people irl who i call “friend”. they fill me with love and happiness. i know i always have someone who i can rely on for anything. i do not miss facebook, i do not feel disconnected because i don’t have twitter or foursquare or a smart phone. i don’t feel the need to tell everyone where i am or what i’m doing because the people who count already know.
sorry for the essay!!! this is just something that has been on my mind a bit lately, too. if facebook and twitter are useful tools for you then more power to you! but i feel like my life is actually better without.
So true about Twitter! It’s the epitome of narcissism.
I am barely on facebook anymore. I want to delete it so much but it’s how I communicate with a certain group I normally wouldn’t be able to communicate with as easily. I just go on briefly and get off. I used to live by it but it feels like one less weight on my shoulders. I used to over analyze what people would say to the point where it would ruin my day or night. It’s so hard to “read” tone of voice and it stresses me out sometimes. I’ve ALWAYS hated using the phone at all. When I would babysit as a teenager, I’d call my mom to order the pizza for the kids because I was too scared. I’d much rather text then talk to most people on the phone. I like twitter, but completely agree with you. When anything really great or really bad happens I immediately want to tweet it. I always HATE that but it doesn’t stop me. It’s such a strange time technology-wise. Where is the line?
I recently went through and deleted over 600 people from my facebook and still have 790 “friends”. I’m constantly cleaning out friends there now because I realize they are actually complete strangers who I maybe met once in college at a party or something. All of this rambling to say I completely relate and agree with you! 🙂
Have you been reading my mind for the past week or so? My finger has been hovering on the “delete account” buttons on Facebook and Twitter a lot lately. (And, FYI, I HATE HATE HATE talking on the phone.)
During the horrible events of last week, I found myself relying on Twitter and Facebook(which I only access via my mobile phone) to distract and entertain me. I used email (also via my phone) and text messsaging to stay connected to people and keep them informed; I was hesitant to Tweet or post on Facebook much of what was going on. But after “the end,” I did announce/pay tribute to my mom via brief messages (and a photo or two) on Twitter and Facebook. I was agast at the fact that people I thought were my good friends DIDN’T EVEN NOTICE. (Maybe they’ve hidden my status updates from their Facebook news feeds?)
Granted, I have long known that Twitter and Facebook are not “real,” and that I shoudn’t look for real connections there. And, on principle, I don’t use them to seek attention. So I guess I wasn’t surprised. I guess I was just…more disappointed than I thought I would or should be?
Now, more than ever, I find much of what I see on Twitter and Facebook to be vapid, self-promoting, narcissistic and annoying. (And by “self-promoting,” I don’t mean posting links to blog updates. I dig those.)
The only reason I haven’t deleted my Facebook account is because it keeps me connected to friends and family in Europe, South Africa and Australia. I can’t quite bring myself to quit Twitter because…well…it’s entertaining. But I have hidden quite a few annoying, self-promoting, attention-hungry acquaintances from my Facebook news feed and have stopped following a LOT of people (strangers) on Twitter. (I’ve also kicked my guilty habit of picking up People and US Weekly each week.)
The blog world has been very “real” for me, and has connected me with people like you who have meaningful, enlightening and educational things to say. I wonder if Twitter and Facebook do the opposite by virtue of overloading us with a constant stream of informaton bytes that numb and lure us into thinking we’re interacting with something (or someone) real. I wonder if they make me less prone to interact with real people in the real world. Then again, I live in L.A., where most people are real fake.
*sigh*
P.S. I owe you and Stew emails.
I just left the longest blog comment ever — into which I put a great deal of thought and spent much time editing to make sure it said exactly what I wanted it to say — and it vanished into thin air.
Grrrrr.
For lack of re-writing it from memory, I’ll just say:
WORD.
success! i found it. it was in the approval queue…? odd because yours always go live. at any rate, it was saved. WORD
O. M. G. Hooray!!!!
I love this. And I may have almost just called you 🙂
I think it’s too much. It’s one of the many reasons I don’t have facebook. But I also feel like I’ve missed out on so much and have become somewhat of a social outcast because I resisted the norm. But now this hypocrite is addicted to twitter.
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love.