Hyperkult

Photo credit: Gauldo, via Flickr

Five words, together so ambiguous except to the handful of friends who actually know the real-life referents that bore this Facebook status update. On a screen cluttered with links to songs I like, articles I find interesting, a 10-comment-long thread on Coachella 2010, and a photo of the book I’m currently reading, the text gets lost—lost in a trash heap of social networking miscellany that is supposed to represent me, the person.

“Strange week in coffee shops.”

About every six months, I have a full-blown Facebook anxiety attack, during which time I try—and fail miserably—to stay away from the website, wondering why I feel the need to broadcast my hunger pains (”Desperately Seeking Soba”) and other absurd fragments that have no business being on the internet. I do not see how, on a site where information is dispatched with Bloomberg ticker rapidity, the lives of my 300-odd “friends” could be enhanced by seeing a picture of my birthday cake.

The idea of nurturing online friendships is another issue altogether. There are unspoken rules to using Facebook. For instance, if a friend “likes” your status, you duly repay them by commenting on a photo, or something adequately reciprocal. Perhaps this isn’t done on the same day, but within a week’s time should suffice so as not to bruise anyone’s ego. And who, exactly, should you let into your online clique? I’ve just spent the past 24-hours scrubbing my Friends list of people I never speak to, don’t know, can’t remember, and so on. Nearly 50 innocent souls were lost in the process (sorry, Alain Macklovitch and Dana Cowin), and that was only a very hurried first-run. I will quit for the time being, but watch out this summer, because you could be next.

I take issue with the ways in which the Internet intervenes in our lives, but moreso with my complicity in the process. I’m concerned that we’re inundated with information for the sake of information, and that nothing meaningful sticks. I’m concerned that my online behavior is sometimes a cry for social approval. I’m concerned that experience is devalued in favor of recording said experience. I’m concerned that it’s all a terrible farce.

Having deleted my Twitter account months ago, I wonder if I’ll ever have the fortitude to axe my Facebook account for good, too. The answer is probably “no,” because I, like fellow addicts (admitted or not), get voyeuristic fulfillment from seeing what my “friends”—always in scare quotes—are thinking, feeling, doing, and I give them the same in return. I enjoy seeing the tiny red notification flag pop up in the lower right-hand corner of my screen, as if I’m the fucking Sally Field of the web.

Facebook, web-specific news outlets (more like aggregating tools and platforms for punditry), and yes, blogs, too, all belong to a family of new media that I am as apprehensive about as I am an active agent in ensuring their survival. The moment I become overtly concerned I’m living out a Huxley novel, I banish the upsetting thoughts and status update (verb) that I’ve just seen Jason Bateman at my local Peet’s (four comments, six likes).

Maybe I’m a neo-Luddite, don’t “get it,” or am just hopelessly uncool. All I know is, I derive far more pleasure from taking the time to truly breathe, participate in and ingest the world around me rather than worrying that I’m missing out on an online world that is mainly meaningless noise.

I value those indescribably wonderful moments that can’t be reduced to 140-characters or less, the richness of real-life conversations that GChat’s paltry window can’t contain, sitting down with a real, ink-and-paper magazine filled with articles that writers labored over—not some repost of a post of a thing that was seen on a blog. I find the bright light of my laptop screen blinding and somewhat paralyzing at times, and not just because I had my eyes dilated this week.

If I were to status update right now, I would have but eight words:

The road to hell is paved with tweets.*

*Pretty sure I stole this from my friend Chas, but at least he’s getting credit on my blog.

From my favorite "Vogue" shoot of all time; Natalia Vodianova as "Alice," shot by Annie Leibovitz, December 2003

When NPR put out a call for its Facebook fans and Twitter followers to sum up 2009 in one word, the response was immediate, the theme, obvious. Last I checked on tha ‘Book, over 3,000 users submitted responses mainly lamenting the shit-tastic year that was. NPR’s Andy Carvin used Wordle, a fantastically entertaining visual language “toy,” to create a collage out of the results, revealing feedback along the lines of “ugh,” “crappy,” “bittersweet,” and “fubar” (”fucked up beyond all recognition”).

But there, lying smack dab in the middle of the colorful tag cloud was a beacon of hope: “change.” This was indeed the theme of 2009. While I agree with fellow Facebook users that the last year was “sucky” on many fronts, I also remind myself that change is inherently painful. It requires that we are jolted from all that is safe and comfortable, that we consider a wildly different existence—one that may make us “fitter, happier, more productive,” yet doesn’t promise a permanently blissful future.

2009 bequeathed me a layoff, romantic trysts gone awry, the unexpected conclusion of a friendship, and general malaise— inheritances which range from mild disappointments to wrenching stabs. At least, they have been edifying, and I write this today with a persistent, dopey sense of hope that things can and will get better.

I revel in the possibility that a new year, new decade, and in just over a week’s time, my birthday, superficially mark on calendars. When I started this blog, I ended my inaugural post as I readied to leave my apartment and hike Runyon Canyon, “hoping for a momentary break in the cloud coverage” as a symbolic cue that all would be okay. Now, in the early morning hours of January 1st, I’m throwing on my running shoes in pursuit of the catharsis that a few laps around Silverlake Reservoir offers. It’s clear outside.