You are viewing stuff tagged with facebook.
You are viewing stuff tagged with facebook.
Recently, I realized that the problem with Facebook is that you can’t actually discuss the problems with Facebook on Facebook. By “can’t”, I mean the discourse has dropped to the lowest common denominator (Cf. “eternal September”). So, in a place where everyone is showing selected pieces of their lives to give an aura of grandeur, carefree frivolity, success, beauty, ease… there’s no time for subtlety, considered introspection, gentle humor. The problem, set in terms of one of my typically strained metaphors: if you’re staring at neon signs all day and then someone shows you a watercolor, it’s going to be boring.
So it turns out I’m absolutely atrociously bad at writing Facebook status updates. My writing tends to be long-form, verbose, scientific… delving deeply into topics like dental materials. Fascinating to me, boOOoring to others.
It’s been a long time since I posted something on Facebook that wasn’t conceived and composed to produce a particular effect in the audience reading it. I no longer feel free enough to celebrate something (anything), express disgust, or just be myself in words and pictures. I’m constantly measuring and guessing about how my thoughts will be received. As a result, I’m more concerned with the reaction to my message and how people will judge me than I am with the actual message. That’s a bad sign: I can no longer be myself.
This is an experiment. I will now post the following to my Facebook account:
The only thing I want more than a really good Democratic presidential candidate is a Republican one.
Likely response: apathy. Time will tell, though.
“Facebook [brings out] our weakest traits as humans. We love to think of ourselves as something we want to be. We trade our true feelings to be included. We want to be popular. We want our taste in music and art to be [valued]. We crave for external success.”
— kunjaan
Farmville is even more of a bummer than I’d originally thought. Cultivated Play: Farmville:
The most important thing to recognize here is that, whether we like it or not, seventy-three million people are playing Farmville: a boring, repetitive, and potentially dangerous activity that barely qualifies as a game. Seventy-three million people are obligated to a company that holds no reciprocal ethical obligation toward those people.
You know you’re growing up when you’re much more interested in the decorating and appliance choices made in the kitchens of Facebook pictures than you are in the people in the pictures. Also under development: maturity.
As promised: extremely heartening piece declaring online social networking as the beginning of the end of conspicuous consumption, and the start of something significantly more environmentally sustainable. Conspicuous, but not Consuming, by Stephen Linaweaver:
In late 2005, a Marquette dental school student was suspended over blog posts which were critical of classmates and teachers at the writer’s school. No specific names were mentioned by the writer, but the punishments doled out by Marquette were extremely severe. Loss of scholarship, suspension, community service, demands for a public apology. This (as the article puts it) “draconian” reaction to public expression has caused me to remove tumbledry from public search engines. As a dental student, I’d prefer not to deal with the hassle of defending everything I write to a professional review committee. So, as of a few days ago, no Google search for my name, the phrase tumbledry, Mykala, etc. will pull up this page. Nope. We’re completely unlisted.
Slashdot linked to a presentation called “How Facebook Stores Billions of Photos” — fun facts:
Facebook efficiently stores ~6.5 billion images, in 4 or 5 sizes each, totaling ~30 billion files, and a total of 540 TB and serving 475,000 images per second at peak…
I just got spammed on Facebook. Thing is, it’s from someone I knew in high school. Ahh… the wonderfully weird world of new social media.
I recently wrote about the absurdity of using social networking photos as indisputable evidence in a piece called Puritanical, Tyrannical, Overreaching Public Schools. I centered my argument around events at Eden Prairie High School, events which have been essentially repeated at Woodbury High School (my alma mader). I’ll keep writing the same journal until something changes, I guess. Here’s the story this time around: instead of controversial pictures being reported to the school by an anonymous meddling informant (as they were at Eden Prairie), they were shown by a student at Woodbury High School as part of a health presentation about underage drinking. The common reaction is: “wow those students sure are stupid for putting these pictures online, then presenting them to a class.” Such a statement is an oversimplification of the situation and it conflates stupidity with naïveté. Allow me to explain.
You may enjoy the discussion at Slashdot about an Eden Prairie, MN school attempting to punish students for pictures of the students drinking found on Facebook.
For those of you stopping by from the Facebook invite … feel free to congregate, mill around, or whatever it is that crowds do. Alternatively, you can click around at whatever strikes your fancy. The latter option might be a better bet.
To clarify on the turning 8 thing … tumbledry has been around in one form or another since 1999. As for the actual name “tumbledry” … that’s been around since June 22, 2003. I guess we’re coming up on 4 years if you count that way. So, a bit of number inflation going on there. Sorry about that.
I just hacked out a big music list from my Facebook profile that came off as elitist and pretentious. For posterity, I’ll preserve it here.
(in no particular order), George Winston, Keith Jarrett, Beatles, Jimmy Eat World, Verical Horizon, Death Cab for Cutie, The Postal Service, Nickel Creek, Peter Gabriel, Stephen Speaks, Lifehouse, Radiohead, Dishwalla, Bright Eyes, Dashboard Confessional, Enya, Dirty Vegas, Cornershop, Aberfeldy, The Raveonettes, The Strokes, Dexter Freebish, The Afters, Switchfoot, Cake, The White Stripes, Franz Fredinand, Imogen Heap aka Frou Frou, The Dead 60’s, Coldplay, Silvertide, Steadman, Weezer, Weird Al, The Arcade Fire, Paul van Dyk, DJ Tiesto, Darude (not Sandstorm), DJ Encore, Paul Oakenfold, ATB, Moby, Hoobastank, Something Corporate, Jem, Jamie Cullum, Wheat, St. Germain, Queen, Five Iron Frenzy, Keri Noble, Jack Johnson, Bjork, Benny Benassi, Kasabian, Snow Patrol, Anna Nalick, Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Paul Simon, Simple Plan, The Shins, Sheryl Crow, Semisonic, Scatman John, Scissor Sisters, Rufus Wainwright, Rockapella, Frank Sinatra, Ben Harper, Loreena McKennitt, Fountains of Wayne, Damien Rice, The Cynic Project, Howie Day, Keane, Telecast, Vince Guaraldi
Really great New York Times article about facebook - Consider the kid who had a party that he suspected was busted because campus security read about it on facebook. So, he plans a party centered on beer that really just involves a cake that says “Beer!” on it. Campus police get there, they are nonplussed, hilarity ensues.
Why did I join the facebook? (For a quick definition of facebook: it’s like an interactive yearbook spanning your high school and college careers). Anyhow, the above question sprang into my mind today as I looked at my “confirm friends” page and realized that the two people listed on it are not people I would call friends and are either (a) insecure folk who simply are trying to increase the number of people listed under their “is friends with” column; or are (b) random celebrities listed by people too bored to do something constructive and original with their spare time. I joined facebook because everyone else did, I admit it. Sometimes I wish there were bandwagons for reading good books or learning to paint or something. Just think of the thousands of hours wasted by people clicking around on facebook when they could have been learning something. People are crazy.