The Internet People

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Facebook is a waste of time. Indeed, it seems to be so widely accepted that no one dares to doubt it any more. I’m not going to completely deny such an obvious truth. For that, I’ve spend too much time during which I was supposed to be studying by dully refreshing the homepage, waiting for something to happen, or by nonsensical quizzes and even more nonsensical Facebook games. However, I do, as usual, have certain objections.

The topic is so widely popular that it actually even made its way to our church. There was a visiting priest a couple of weeks back, who went through how addictive Facebook was (which it is, there’s no denying that) in the sermon. He went on, describing how a lady told him she “has to log in because people are writing to her”, and how he explained that she doesn’t have to, and that if she stops replying, people will stop writing, eventually.

That was the moment when I said to myself: “Wait, what?”

Because, really, did he realize it was her friends he was talking about? Would he say, for example, “well if you stop calling them and seeing them, your mates will stop bothering you after some time”? I don’t believe he would. But then, where’s the difference?

Everybody keeps talking about how people are aggressive in the internet discussions because they feel safe, protected by the anonymity, that they know (or think) nothing can happen to them. But it works the other way round, too. Many people seem to think that their partners in internet discussions are somehow less real than people they meet in a pub somewhere. That it is not really their friend or schoolmate they’re talking to, but some strange kind oh his shadowy alter-ego.

Now, I’m not denying that internet communication has less value than the personal one. But still, I don’t think anyone would complain if somebody communicated with a friend via good old written letters. It would seem so very romantic and personal and beyond reproach. But the only difference actually is that the letters take longer to get to the recipient, making them less accurate, since at the moment when he reads them, they might not represent the author’s state of mind any more. Oh, and they are harder to read, too (well, at least mine are. No one who has ever seen my handwriting would ask me to write him a letter.) I do understand how it is more romantic than an email, but please, let’s not pretend it’s a more valuable form of communication.

So what is it about internet communication that makes the people who wouldn’t object to letters complain? Is it a form of technophobia? Perhaps. In case of elder people, it could be explained as a somewhat natural mistrust of new things. But I can’t help the feeling that even in my age group, the internet communication is sneered upon as something inferior. For some people, it seems to be the unpleasant thing everybody is doing, but they are all ashamed for it. At least among the “intellectuals”, most seem to pretend they don’t really enjoy Facebook and they have joined it just because everybody else is there (“I just needed to communicate and some people weren’t available anywhere else”). And I cannot help to wonder why.

With the intellectuals, it can also be a form of a pathological counterculturness (well, pathological in my opinion, of course), which I find even funnier than technophobia. But notwithstanding the pose of the person in question, I think everybody should have in mind that their friends are still the same friends when communicated with via the internet, and that degrading Facebook as a complete waste of time is, in a way, degrading the people they have on their friend list. As far as it is used to communicate, indeed, I do not regard Facebook as a waste of time in the slightest.