How’s that for a title?  Before proceding with this rant I want to congratulate Perian on her last blog which really did what Musematic was intended to do–elicit comment and dialogue from the field on important topics of concern to all of us.  You go girl.

AND NOW….my rant.

After a little more than three weeks I am ineffably tired of Facebook.  I’m not tired of everything about it.   In fact I’ve reconnected with some very good friends from college and have started a really satisfying conversation with the wife of a colleague over seas.  Someone (the wife in this case) who I’ve always admired but seldom get to see.  Also, many of the applications, have a sense of humor about them which is rare to find on the internet–I love “More Cowbell” in the way I love a good joke (but I don’t need to hear the same joke 100 times).  In the final analysis, I gotta say there are things about social neworking on Facebook that are disturbing to me.

As a teenager growing up in the Mid-West (Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio) in the 1970s we had a form of interactive social networking–it was called a “Slambook.”  If you don’t know what one is, or if you called it something different in your neck of the woods, a slambook worked something like this.  Take one three ring binder or notebook and at the top of each page write a question–start with the easy questions (your name, your grade, your favorite color, your favorite television show etc.) and move on gradually to more revealing questions (what qualities do you like in a boyfriend/girlfriend?  who is the cutest girl in high school; who is the most popular boy in school; who is the smartest girl;  describe–in one sentence–your perfect date, etc. etc. etc.).   Someone would be the first person to write in the book–they would take the first line, number it, and you would always know that the first answer was Leslie’s, or Mark’s, or Steve’s, or Holly’s.   Then you’d pass the notebook around. Maybe it would take a day or two to circulate, maybe it would take a week or two, but it would always return to the person who started it and she (it was almost always a she starting one of these, as far as I can tell the boys participated but weren’t much interested in the book unless 1. it would give them needed information on a girl they were currently interested in, or 2.  it allowed them in some definable or indefinable way to metaphorically prove that “their’s was bigger.”)   

The girls almost always used the Slambooks as a way to give other people way too way much information.  Social networking was a form of mating ritual in the 1970s and is a form of mating ritual in the 21st century–even if you weren’t/aren’t going to mate–it was/is about discovering others and letting others discover you.  Facebook is essentially a big, interactive, Slambook. 

And you know what, digital natives like my 14 year old, use Facebook far more effectively and sometimes much less embarassingly than my 30, 40, and 50 something colleagues who are trying to use a system for mating rituals to conduct, improve, and change business relationships.  It seems to me we aren’t using the right tool for the job. (I can see that I may have 35 fewer Facebook friends in the near future)  While my son clearly uses Facebook as a way to define himself to his friends, he also uses it as a way to get to know his friends better.  He certainly doesn’t use it to interact with his teachers–nor does he want to.  He very reluctantly acknowledges my existence on Facebook (the price of having his own page is his parents do random checks on it).  He doesn’t confuse his social life with his work but more importantly he doesn’t really try to use it, to quote Jon Lovitz’s Harvey Fierstein impression, to cry out to the world “I just want to be loved, is that so wrong?”  His form of social networking has a whole different kind of baggage associated with it.  And to be honest, I’m not sure if the differences in his behavior on Facebook and that of people my own age are are based on his age (and role as a digital native) or his gender.

“Never take a person’s dignity: it is worth everything to them, and nothing to you.” –Frank Barron

I knew there was a problem when I found there were simply things that some of my friends were writing that I could not bear to read.  I was too embarassed.  I found that, in the privacy of my own home, I was avoiding looking at a portion of my moniter because I might accidently read something about someone that I simply didn’t want to know about them.   My ”Friends” on Facebook is not really a group of my friends it’s a mixed group of people some of whom I know well, some of whom I know hardly at all.   My issue with Facebook is not that there is too much information, it’s that there is too much sharing. 

Now my rant is not just the pot calling the kettle black.  This here Pot is guilty of too much sharing as well–and I can recognize in my current behavior the same motivations that made me write in the slambook long ago.  (read in Holly’s whiny voice:  I want people to know where I’ve been, I want them to see what I’ve read, know what I’m doing, when I’m happy, when I’m sad, know me, respond to me….I just want to be loved is that so wrong?”)

What’s wrong with Facebook (for me) is it doesn’t get me any further along the road in attaining what I think I crave most from the people I work with-their respect.  I don’t need or want the same things from my work relationships that I do from my close personal friends.

I was going to close with St. Augustine’s famous adjuration, “Familiarity breeds contempt.”   But  instead how about a pinch of Benjamin Franklin and a dash of Mies Van Der Rohe.

“The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.”“

-Benjamin Franklin

Less is more.

–Mies Van Der Rohe

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