Lost in Bytes
[ Home ]The entering into the Facebook time has utterly changed the networking
experience of the internet. The discussion boards, forums, community
sites have died out and been replaced. But I still miss that past
masquerade as means of communication. People were given opportunities to
dialogue with unfamiliar groups, to find minds alike, which was pretty
much the whole purpose of connection. Both retained, we were yet able
to speak our minds. That kind of in-depth communication only possible
within distance, was fair. Every new account was a fresh start, while
the rarest thing in world and in life, is a chance to start over. In the
Facebook time that possibility has been stifled, our focus has also
been switched from the communication itself with other people to the
branding, the self-packaging. We no longer care what other people have
to say, but what ourselves have to say.
To me, the disaster
started from real name branding. Putting one's real name on the internet
was once an uncomfortable practice. Maybe of a cultural difference. A
decade ago I often found it silly every time I saw somebody fussing to
put his real name on the internet. I would decided whether to give my
name based on how well I am connected to the other person. But real name
branding was vigorously encouraged when Facebook arrived, whose purpose
was of course to build an internet ID for everyone, one by one. It
seemed like a genius idea, just a bit mechanically naive, as if everyone
likes perfectly the person he is that he longs to boast in that way. It
seemed to me just very strange that a stranger knows my name, like
someone in the street to whom I do not wish necessarily to share it. If
Internet is a public street, I am merely someone who tries to become
Banksy, but who leaves his real name after every graffiti?
Putting
aside considerations of complex human emotions, the result is that
hypocrisy of the social reality has been transplanted on to the
internet, fully synchronized and even promoted. Interpersonal barriers
still exist, only worse. What constrain people in reality still
constrain them on internet, but what can be avoided with physical
distance however can not be avoided online, therefore the internet has
now even less privacy to offer than the offline world. And the like
minded, who are rare to encounter in the real world are now also
filtered out by all the circling and grouping and privacy setting. The
strangest thing is, many of us set privacy not always for whom we don't
know but also for those we know, in order to avoid complication.
The network has thus successfully become a simple tool that certainly offers convenience, but gives not freedom.
While
bringing huge values to Facebook, what we receive in return are merely
some news of old acquaintances that we probably no longer care about.
Their graduating, jobbing, wedding, breaking, babies born, babies poop,
location spotting, up roaring, out spitting. Overwhelmed by unrelated
things from barely related people, and vice versa we feed them back with
the same, over and over again, until we are all wrapped in layers and
layers of something we always try and always fail to avoid: loneliness.
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