“Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” - H.L. Mencken
Every now and then you still come across someone that curses the shadow of the Web. Today’s edition is a tirade against the Facebook from Rob Horning.
Unfortunately, Mr. Horning takes himself too seriously. His self-loathing and self-righteous writing style is reminiscent to just about any Rage Against the Machine song — with “I am not a number” as the reoccurring theme.
Good news for Mr. Horning: just like Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, you do not have to use or consume in any manner, this, as you would say, bourgeois activity. While obtaining a .edu email address is a hurdle one must jump over to become a member, procuring one does not engender some kind of elitist country-club status. In fact, gaining admissions into the junior colleges and many universities that are supported via Facebook does not require the intelligence or sophistication of a box of hammers, let alone a rocket scientist. It is merely another privacy filter, and for many people (especially women) a much wanted layer of privacy that helps foster and cultivate a level of trust (IMHO, this is an area which entrepreneurs could still capitalize on).
I have never met Mark Zuckerberg (creator of Facebook) nor have I read the New Yorker article that Mr. Horning critiques (Paul Kedrosky’s snipet inspired me to look for a hard copy). That said, I doubt that the sensationalism surrounding social networks, such as Facebook is entirely justified.
One of the reasons I use these web services is the same reason I save phone numbers, email addresses or IM handles. It is a convenient and reliable method for contacting and keeping track of friends, family, acquaintances and very attractive coeds.
Heck, as Mr. Horning notes, I doubt many of the people listed as “friends� know my true thoughts on net neutrality, let alone that I blog or write articles on a regular basis. But I do not expect that of them, nor is this a trait I use to define friendship.
While sites like MySpace and Facebook could and are invariably used for numerous vain purposes of show-boating and popularity contests, they are for-better-and-for-worse a tool that could be used in a cornucopia of manners.
I personally tend to goof around with them, having fun with survey’s, interests, biographies and comments. In fact, my MySpace account is one superfluous “wtf?” and Facebook has become an easy way for me to upload the crazy get-ups I wear to events.
But this is neither here nor there. Perhaps as Mr. Horning notes, these sites are simply virtual meet-ups for a superficial hedonistic generation wanting to brag and show off their spoiled toys. What is so morally wrong with that? If you are going to lament this fad (though, based on studies from individuals like Fred Stutzman, these seem to have some staying power), you better ride in a very tall horse because, there is this thing called network television that has lots of similar crap on it too. Reality TV anyone?
One man’s pompous primadonna is another man’s pal. Life would certainly continue to move along without the existence of social networking sites; drink specials at bars would still exist, bad pick-up lines would still be used, inebriated hook-ups would still occur and STDs would still be passed around.
I am sure we can all find annoying habits, traits and character flaws in one another, including magazine subscriptions, movie rentals and humor. However, these are called individual preferences and are amoral.
So while these sites are not always used to highlight and illustrate your A-game or mommy’s little angel, you alone define and control your existential purpose and meaning at the site. And for over seven million “self-induced shallow� students, each has different rhymes and reasons for continuing to use this reported arm-pit of the virtual world. And none is objectively wrong because this is a philosophically subjective arena (i.e. bounces off of me and sticks to you).
Note: I was paid a million dollars from News Corp to write the above statements.