The Fallacy of Facebook
I have several friends who choose not to become a member of the large and growing facebook community. They each have different reasons – generally none of which make sense to me.
facebook is fun! It enables me to stay in touch with folks, to send messages, to see photos and play games – even exchanging pithy dialogue with friends(acquaintances) as varied as those whom I haven’t actually seen or spoken with in nearly 40 years, those whom I may have met only once in passing, and those whom I see and speak with daily. What could be better or more convenient than that?
Besides, I will typically argue, “You are on facebook anyway!” Whether you have an account or not, others are likely to mention your name or include your image in their postings.
I am a fan of facebook. And I believe that facebook has a valuable, useful and permanent role in our post-modern community. Participating on facebook is becoming less and less optional. So we might as well get in the game and enjoy it. But, I discovered this week that there is a fallacy in facebook.
My Aunt Ciby was killed in a head-on collision this past week. This was shocking and sad news.
When I moved to St. Louis in the late 1980’s Aunt Ciby’s house was the first stop I made. She went apartment hunting with me and argued with me about picking up the dinner check after we got my mother’s approval for the choice that I made. She and Uncle Charles, along with my cousins Ronnie and Carlos, just enveloped me as one of their own as I took my first steps towards being a grown-up – and they made it seem effortless.
Aunt Ciby was my also facebook friend. Though we’d traded many messages, comments and likes, I probably hadn’t actually spoken to her in the last year or two; and it had been much longer than that since I’d seen her last. That makes me sad too.
Aunt Ciby paid attention to my facebook and blog posts, and to those about and by my immediate and extended family. She would often comment, reminding us about the significance of a post or encouraging us to stay on the path we were following. You could hear her voice and feel her intention through the computer screen – and it mattered.
But despite the importance of these interactions, this is also the fallacy of facebook.
Without facebook would I have taken a few minutes to pick up the phone
and share some laughs with my aunt? Might I have made it a higher
priority to get to St. Louis and share in a family event? I don’t know the
answer to these questions – and certainly won’t definitively answer
that I would have. Being an adult is a full time job, and unfortunately
that means that we too often sacrifice time spent with the
ones we love for the day-to-day activities that pay
the bills and seems so much more immediately important.
But I do know that there is a fallacy in facebook that we should all be wary of. facebook made me believe that I had been much closer to Aunt Ciby recently than I actually was. The reality is that facebook is a poor substitute for building or maintaining relationships. As interesting as they sometimes are, it takes more than a regular status update to stay close to someone.
Yet, I encourage you to make the most of facebook. Scroll through your friend list and consider which of these people really mean something to you. Pick out a few and give them a call, schedule lunch or drop by the house after work today. Use facebook as a tool to develop real relationships with those whose friendships matter the most. Take joy in the friends who are really just acquaintances, but protect, cherish and grow the interactions that are full and genuine.
That is not to say that there is no love and affection within the facebook community. Of course there is. Just don’t allow the fallacy of facebook to create a false sense of intimacy with your friends and family.
Rest Aunt Ciby, rest. You will be missed – by me and by your 417 other facebook friends.
