Like everyone else, I have a Facebook account. I find it both fascinating and frustrating at the same time. Picking a profile picture is nothing short of an exercise in self-psychoanalysis. What image of yourself do you want to project to friends, acquaintances and random strangers?
Do I go with one with the goofy smile: Hey, look at me! I’m a fun guy!
Maybe me and the wife: Hey, look at me! I’m happily married!
No, me and the kids: Hey Look at me! I know all of you dads got World’s Greatest Dad Mugs for Father’s Day….but seriously I’m the real deal. Your kids/spouses….they all lied.
No wait….Me with my shirt off in black and white: That’s right! All you ladies who passed up on this are so…so…sorry now!
Every picture you post says something about you. What if I say the wrong thing? I recently posted a picture of my kid in a Storm Trooper Helmet. But all you could see was the helmet and the blaster rifle. Which basically says: Yup…still a hopeless dork.
Then there are Status Updates. I wish my life was so interesting that I had something to say that I thought anyone would care about. Mine are usually something lame like:
I just ate a huge burrito.
Or, because I am supposed to be funny I spend 5 minutes composing a 1 sentence witticism that usually isn’t that funny. For Example:
Chris is pulling like crazy…the data that is.
I spent 5 minutes writing that update. It was dumb and mostly gross and didn’t get a single comment.
In the guise of making a page about you and your life and keeping everyone up to date with what’s going on in said life, you come to realize, there isn’t a bunch going on.
And then it hits you. Wait…..I’m boring?
After looking at some other people’s pages, and all of their mundane updates and the little details that make up their specific versions of life you come to the conclusion that all of your lives are kind of the same. You work, you raise your kids, maybe you go out occasionally. My life appears to be just like the lives of everyone else out there.
Then the walls really come tumbling down. Wait…I’m not special?
Facebook’s insistence that I update my status and in turn see other’s updates has left me searching for more interesting things to say about my day than my “friends’” days and I have come up dry. In doing so, it has created a small hole in the insulating balloon that is Chris’s Theory of Inherent Specialness. Which has existed since roughly 1st grade and basically states that I am more special than you or anyone else for that matter. Your awareness of that fact and the veracity of the same are in no way connected. In fact, if you can’t tell I’m special, I’m sorry but you obviously just don’t have an eye for such things.
I’m not sure how to deal with that puncture. It takes years to build a good defense mechanism. I’m not sure I’m ready to abandon Inherent Specialness. This isn’t some moth-eaten teddy bear or a tattered blanket we’re talking about, it’s an integral piece of who I am. No, getting rid of it simply won’t do.
Luckily though, I don’t have to. The fact of the matter is, because of the accessibility and openness of Facebook, the really interesting things, the really juicy things are kept secret. As they should be, I might add. Because you never know who’s reading. Just because I look boring on my Facebook account, doesn’t mean I really am. Yes! This might work! There’s so much going on, you don’t even know! I am so cool, I can’t even write half the shit I’m up to because it’s just too much for the general public. My boss, and two ex-girlfriends are “friends” for crying out loud! They couldn’t handle this kind of intensity. Do I feel bad that I cannot freely share the awesomeness that is my life? Sure. But it’s the right thing to do. I don’t want to make the rest of my friends jealous or feel as if their lives are less meaningful or less fulfilling. What kind of “friend” would I be if I constantly displayed my superiority with killer profile pics and hysterically funny Status Updates? The answer is not a very good one.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
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