Dear Facebook friends (and actual friends),

After spending the morning reviewing the week's activity as people I've known and people I don't know and acquaintances I've made over the past forty or fifty years exchange messages on my 'Wall' as if they are a real community in the real world I was inspired once more to participate, to be a part of this online event-scene. Alas, once more the functionality of the interface eluded me. I tried repeatedly to post but my posts just seemed to disappear. 

So, once again I stepped back and took stock of the time I had spent and wondered just what it is about Facebook that doesn't agree with me. I mean, I went out and bought the Time magazine Person of the Year issue that was all about Zuckerberg and Facebook. I saw the Aaron Sorkin movie. I even watched the Saturday Night Live video where the actual Zuckerberg co-hosts the show with the actor Zuckerberg and the SNL Zuckerberg. He seems like a nice enough guy and Time makes him out to be an idealist, not even concerned about money and power. In the Time article there was all this stuff about the "New" Internet culture of 'friends' versus the "Old" Internet culture of anonymity, and that sounded pretty cool. 

Then there's the demonstrations in Egypt which we are told are in part facilitated by social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. Right on! I should just let go of my silly reserve and jump full in!!! So what if the only real connection I've made on the site in the past year has been as an unwilling conduit for some sort of virus? So what if I've never taken part in an intelligent conversation that went beyond a couple of abbreviated comments and then petered out whenever anything sensitive was touched upon? So what if the whole concept of introspection or critical thinking comes off as that slightly neurotic and slightly obnoxious character making everyone nervous at a party? It's all good vibes here. We're all 'friends' after all and if we actually disagreed with each other in any substantial way we wouldn't be meeting on Facebook would we?

And EVERYONE is on Facebook! How can anyone deny its effectiveness and appeal? The appeal is undeniable. The questions that keep coming up for me concern its effectiveness. True, it has facilitated communications on the ground feeding the current upheavals in the Middle East and previously in Iraq. I wouldn't go so far to say that social media is a driving force of popular revolt as in Egypt people are actually motivated to take action on the ground in real life. In this context Facebook is indeed a valuable tool, just as the telephone and telegraph and radio and television have been valuable tools in their time. But we are not in Egypt. We are in America, where digital culture actually takes the place of real culture. In America we don't even distinguish one from the other, and outside of the digital world there is very little that challenges the assumptions we live by. Most of us are consumers of culture rather than generators of it. 

Then it hit me. Just as the Internet can be an addictive distraction from participation in the 'real' world, Facebook goes another step. It can be a distraction from participation in anything other than Facebook. Most telling to me is that almost none of the people that I actually communicate with personally, via email, phone, letters or physical contact, are people that I encounter on Facebook. It's like a gated community of consumers sharing their common satisfactions and dissatisfactions without ever really upsetting the pleasant boat ride. Although some of my friends regularly post pithy and valuable material, an activity which I highly respect, their postings never appear to go anywhere, or generate any discussion or introspective comment or...anything. There are buttons where we can indicate whether we "Like" or "Dislike" the posting in the 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' criteria that's a currency of mediocre movie reviewers. I rarely if ever have seen any "Dislikes" on!
 my page. 

Or is it 'my' page? A very good friend of mine, not on Facebook, asked me how the site makes money. Why is Facebook valued at fifty billion dollars by Goldman Sachs if it's only about social networking? Could all this revenue be generated by the Single Mature Males ads that appear along the sidebar? Are there that many Single Mature Males out there? Or is the key to Facebook that it's not primarily about generating communities or friendships at all? Rather it's about consumption, in this case the consumption of connectivity for the sake of itself. This is not, of course a problem, except that connectivity that is artificially and arbitrarily limited to 420 characters or less kind of limits the quality, if not the quantity, of connections. In a society that thrives on superficiality I fail to see where there is much advantage. In a nation that lives mostly in its own constructed fantasies does Facebook make a positive difference or does it only reinforce the fantasy and add a!
nother layer to the rising level of noise?

I remembered my satisfaction when one of my son's best friends posted on the 'Wall' a long succession of somewhat disruptive links to You Tube videos showing the civil riots going on at that moment all over the world in response to the economic collapse. "Now THIS is more like it," was the thought that came over me as I regarded the effort as challenging, in your face and informative. It was in the spirit of true graffiti and an artful expression of a personally felt emotion I haven't seen a post by this person since. Perhaps there were complaints and he was censored. More likely he just concluded that in this context there was little point.

Whatever one has to say, the 'Wall' just keeps scrolling along relentlessly, never pausing long enough to really consider anything. 

Alright, I hear the chorus telling me that what we want is a place where we can escape from all the struggle and disagreement, where we can be at home and at peace with those who share our sensibilities. This is a point well taken. Maybe its just a matter of style and comfort. While the community around us engages in struggle its certainly reassuring to find other voices we can relate to, even if its out there in cyberspace.  

Once again I've concluded that Facebook isn't for me. I'm sure that it won't miss me and that all of my friends will carry on their conversations happily. I'm sorry that I must opt out and that there will be one less street corner on which to shoot the breeze. If you want to get in touch you can always send me an email and I promise I will answer as I can. Or you can just search my name on Google and you will summon my blog at Salon.com. I'll miss all those wonderful posts and links provided by Marshall and Val, but maybe I'll stumble across some of them on my own. Of course, Marshall and Val are also welcome to write to me or to put me on their own email lists and I will certainly write and respond to anything they have to say. 

Until then, I'm signing off, sincerely,

Ralph E. Melcher

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