The Facebook Saga

So, instead of doing something productive like starting the two essays I have due on Tuesday, or packing for Marseille (I leave tomorrow, great excitement!), or even putting photos up on this blog (which is the only part that most of you care about anyway), I am going to bitch about Facebook. (Because that's what the internet needs, yet another blog post about Facebook. I'm only perpetuating the problem, aren't I.)

My relationship with Facebook can be characterized by a relatively simple outline.

I. Infatuation
This stage of the Facebook Problem begins with the creation of a Facebook account and generally continues for the duration of a user's time in high school. New users usually exhibit certain characteristic reactions to their first Facebook exposure, notably:
a. Wasting hours clicking through thousands of their friends' photos;
b. Agonizing over the perfect, pithy-yet-alternative quote for their profile;
c. Stalking the profiles of potential/former romantic interests;
d. Writing on their friends' walls just because they can and making an effort to sound clever, in the hope that all mutual friends will click on "See Wall-to-Wall" and realize how cool the user is;
e. Listing books they have never read and/or bands they have never heard of as their Favorites, in an attempt to sound cool;
f. Friending anyone who ever attended their high school, ever, to up their friend count;
g. Treating Facebook like a jacked-up Twitter account and posting hourly status updates;
h. Creating 7 different "Limited Profiles" to make sure they avoid any unpleasant situations when Mom and Dad finally decide to be Cool and create accounts;
i. Photoshopping their profile picture into strange color schemes.

During the Infatuation Stage, users generally check Facebook multiple times a day and exhibit signs of distress when prevented from doing so for more than six hours at a time, except while sleeping. Those in possession of Smart Phones (as opposed to Dumb Phones, obviously) download applications to allow them to access Facebook from their mobile phones, thus creating a constant, low-level exposure and furthering the dependence. Relatedly, users expect responses to all Facebook communications within hours, or there will be Drama.
Users are often irritable when interrupted by family members or friends who attempt to communicate with them through other media, including face-to-face discussions.
This stage of the Facebook Problem generally begins to fade as a user matures, exhausts all of his or her friends' photo albums, and re-learns how to properly use a telephone and write an email. Users gradually transition into:

II. Utility
During this stage of the Facebook Problem, users begin to use Facebook for activities other than stalking their friends [see Stage I part c]. Facebook also assumes its own role in the Pyramid of Remote Social Communication, described as follows:
a. Calling or texting: The most select method of communication, calling or texting occurs among family members, close friends, roommates, and people with whom a user interacts on a daily basis.
b. Email: Emails, generally written with a specific purpose, occur between acquaintances who are close enough to have exchanged email addresses but have not yet crossed the Line of Familiarity into exchanging phone numbers or text messages. [Note: during periods of travel or when use of a cell phone is impractical, email may surpass calling or texting.]
c. Private Facebook message: These messages, which are viewable only to the parties to whom the messages are sent [in theory; see Stage IV: Distrust], serve a function similar to email's, but generally occur among acquaintances who are Facebook Friends but have not exchanged emails. [Note: looking up an email address from a Facebook Profile may or may not be socially acceptable, depending on the context.]
d. Facebook wall post: Wall posts, viewable to all, are the lowest level of remote social communication and usually occur among users who are merely acquaintances about things like classwork.

[Note: this pyramid does not apply to communication that falls outside of social contexts; for example, professional and/or work environments and relationships do not follow the same structure. Also, the pyramid is drastically skewed towards the Facebook end during Stage I, and it is only after the progression into Stage II that it becomes a reliable gauge.]

III. Indifference
This third stage of the Facebook Problem also develops gradually. Users are no longer either infatuated by Facebook [see Stage I] or appreciative of its usefulness [see Stage II], having developed alternative and more efficient methods to accomplish what used to fall in the domain of Facebook. Facebook fades into the background to reside next to dozens of a user's other online habits (including at least three email accounts, daily webcomics, news media, and specific blogs checked on a daily basis). Users generally check Facebook once or twice a day to make sure they do not ignore any Wall Posts or messages, but otherwise exhibit none of the interest characteristic of the two previous stages.
In more severe cases of Stage III, a user's indifference towards Facebook may develop into annoyance at the added online responsibility, at which point users transition into Stage IV. If users have multiple friends who use Obnoxious (TM) Applications, including but not limited to FarmVille, Become a Ninja Assassin, or Personality Tests [e.g. "What color sparkly unicorn are you?"], or are constantly asked by friends to Become a Fan of [something completely unrelated to their interests], annoyance may develop more quickly.

IV. Distrust
This fourth and final stage of the Facebook Problem occurs years after first exposure. Usually prompted by various changes in Facebook's privacy policy, which come in intervals of about four to five months, users finally realize how little control they have over what is linked to their names on the internet. Fed up with the online responsibility, which at this point has ceased to benefit the user at all, and with the growing suspicion that Facebook does not have their best interests at heart, users begin to distrust Facebook.

At the end of Stage IV, a user will attempt to remove all personal information from Facebook and delete his or her account, ending the Facebook Problem. The subsequent realization that it is not possible to actually delete everything, including Wall Posts, Photos, private messages, networks, and other connections, will often produce nervousness, suspicion, irritation, and occasionally anger. Many technology-savvy users will attempt to run programs to purge their online Facebook profiles and delete the information Facebook has stored about them, only to realize that Facebook actively blocks these applications, petulantly holding on to all the information. Eventually, a user will give up on erasing the information and simply deactivate the account, leaving the information accessible to anyone who can access the inner workings of Facebook.



All tongue-in-cheek joking aside, however. I personally have progressed to Stage IV; after hovering comfortably in Stage III for the past two years, I temporarily regressed to Stage II after coming to Madrid but then jumped forward to Stage IV with the recent unveiling of Facebook's new privacy policies and my realization of how little information about yourself you actually have control over, once it's on Facebook.

And thus, my rant. I am deleting my Facebook as much as I can as soon as I get back to the States and no longer use it as a primary method of communication like I do here in Spain.

Final note: I grew up parallel to Facebook, just a few years younger than its target audience (I'm actually just a few years younger than its founder and now multi-kajillionaire Mark Zuckerberg, how's that to make one feel inadequate), and thus used it in its original form (anybody remember poking, or having to tailor all your statuses so they fit with "Linden is _____"?). My perceptions may be slightly skewed.