In 1998, my mother refused to see Titanic. It was simply too big and too popular to live up to the outsized expectations, and after a while it became a point of pride for her. Sure, she missed out on all the inside references—she was never the “king of the world!”—but she coped.
Ten years later, I’m feeling rather Titanic-y about FaceBook. It seems like everyone but me has a page. And while I didn’t start out wanting to rebel against a trend, I am now starting to feel like a real outlier, an anti-social badass. Bring on the leather jacket and motorcycle, because I am not joining FaceBook today—I don’t care how many of you are using “friend” as a verb.
As a consequence, I have no idea what Chip is talking about when he tells me that his girlfriend from eighth grade has been poking him. (Should I be worried?) I’m confused at his talk of being attacked by his college friend’s zombies. And he keeps insisting that if I really loved him, I’d write it on his Wall. Isn’t graffiti illegal?
I’m no Luddite when it comes to computers. In fact, at the risk of sounding like a hoary ancient, I’ve been connecting to the Internet since the times when you needed a Gandalf box—and a verifiable reason at a university—to do so. The first email program I used required a hard carriage return at the end of each line and did not allow for editing beyond the line of text currently in process. I had a favorite BBS. (Nerd alert!) In all, I don’t think I’ve been without Internet access for longer than a couple of months since 1991, and that’s the way I like it.
But truth be told, it’s actually because of my affection for the Internet that I’m resisting FaceBook so mightily. The sheer number of time-sucking activities that I can undertake when I sit down at a series-of-tubes-connected computer are mind-boggling. Signing up for Facebook—with its millions of members and interactive programs and, from what I’m told, so much more—would multiply my ability to waste time, and I’m already unproductive enough when I’m not careful.
I’m also prone to a little Internet addiction, if I’m honest with myself. When I first “discovered” the Internet—please note I am not claiming to have invented it—I spent many long hours doing all the things that the Internet makes possible. (No, not that.) I chatted with people I’d never met. I emailed people I knew. I read about subjects that interested me. And I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning in the computer lab in my college residence hall to do it. I can’t say I ever skipped a class because of the Internet, but I certainly missed opportunities to engage in the actual world because I was so caught up in the virtual.
That’s what I want to avoid as much as possible, keeping in mind that I spend my workweeks on an Internet-connected computer and use my home’s wi-fi capability to its fullest many evenings and weekends. How long I’ll be able to resist adding FaceBook into the mix of my regular Internet activities is anyone’s guess, but by proclaiming my resistance in this space, I should have the motivation of public humiliation if I fold.
For the record, my mom still has yet to see Titanic.
NB: A version of this appeared in this morning's Business to Business journal in the Bozeman Chronicle.
