I am thinking today of social networking, and how it allows us to linger, and how it allows us to completely disconnect ourselves from people. It's funny to me to think that it means something that I'm in relationship and it's really real because it's "Facebook official." What does that even mean? As a couple who has no interest in having things like rings or a marriage license, why is that something that we think needs to be shared with everyone, including people who don't know us? (To be fair, my boyfriend deleted his Facebook.) Is it pride? or is it loneliness?
To go back to the previous thought, though. I was thinking about how one might linger by staying Facebook friends with people that you are no longer friends with, and what that does to the psyche. To be able to look at photographs and feel pleasure to discover that so-and-so has gotten fat, to feel regret to see that he or she has a partner that's not you, or even just to see a face on a screen but not in person and how that can make you feel connected, or make you feel like breaking your computer screen in half.
In truth, I find myself wanting to use things like Facbook more for professional reasons, but I'm not sure what that means or how doing so blurs the boundaries of professional and private. I find myself mostly using Facebook to keep up with my reasonably large family who shares a private page. It does make it easier as we are all spread across the east (coast? None of us are really on the coast except my parents). But it also makes it easier to not call. And, actually, one of my three sisters doesn't use Facebook at all. She had one, but they kicked her off of it because she was using the pseudonym and they didn't think "it's my cats' Facebook" was a good enough reason for a weird name.
I'm not sure what that means either.
I think I'd like to take a class on all of this, because I do find it fascinating, and I'm intrigued by the psychology and sociology of this disparate inter-connectivity. But, at the same time, I can't stand it. Because I'd really like to go get coffee with someone and be able to hold them and smell them than communicate via email.
