10 reasons I don't have a Facebook

I am becoming more and more aware that I am part of a distinct minority among people of my generation. That's right, I'm a Facebook resister.

As the members of said resistance grow fewer and fewer, though, people seem increasingly quick to mistake my refusal to make myself a Facebook page for a generalized hostility toward the Facebook phenomenon itself (or towards its members). However, I intend no such hostility. In fact, I even have a link here on my blog that lets people share it on Facebook! Many of my friends are devoted Facebookers, and I don't even taunt them (too much) for it!

So just to set the record straight, I thought I would take a brief moment of my day to explain the real reasons why I do not now maintain, nor do I ever expect in the future to possess, a Facebook. Note that this is not necessarily an exhaustive list, but it should cover most of the important issues as I see them. I also don't claim any of this as fact, just my own opinion. If you think I'm wrong, let me know! I'd be really happy if all this did was spur thought and discussion on the issue. So, I'll count down the top ten reasons I don't have Facebook, from least important to most important. Here we go:


10. My mom has a Facebook. Mom, if you're reading this, I love you and I mean no offense by it. It's just that your membership is a.) the reason I know so much about Facebook without actually having one, and b.) a great example of a larger trend I'm getting at. Namely, I feel that Facebook has become something my generation never intended it to be. Originally, it was just a cool way to keep in touch and share pictures (which are, by the way, the only things I'd use Facebook for if I had one and are undeniably useful and beneficial) among college students and other young adults. Then high-schoolers started joining. Then parents came to check on them. All of a sudden, they were also commenting on pictures and writing cheesy status messages. Before anyone could say "1950's," it seemed like the whole baby boomer generation had Facebook. End result: Facebook just isn't as cool anymore, and has much less of a draw for me.

9. Little kids have Facebook. Like, really little. This is kind of a corollary to #10, and it's disturbing for all of the same reasons, with the added twist that a lot of things happen on Facebook that really are not appropriate for little kids to be hearing and thinking about. Now, I don't think I'd have anything to hide, but I have some friends with significantly different standards of morality than my own and I'd hate to have to shelter kids that might look at my page from them. I love hanging out with little kids, but they certainly aren't my friends in the same way. Why do they have to grow up so fast?

8. I have no real desire for up-to-the-minute status updates on my friends. In fact, this whole thing kind of freaks me out. Except for my very closest friends (who I talk to plenty without Facebook's intervention), I'm not even interested in what people are doing or feeling moment by moment. Even for my close friends, there are still many things I don't need to know. That might sound horribly mercenary, but if you really think about it, I imagine the same is true for you. Sure, taking in a lot of banal information about what people are doing might make you feel like you care about them, but in essence it's just voyeurism.

7. I have even less desire to give constant status updates on myself. If you know me well at all, you probably realize that I usually play things pretty close to the vest and often prefer to keep my opinions and plans to myself. Now, this has been a problem for me in some ways, since I haven't always let people in to what the real me is like. I'm working on it. The thing is, Facebook is a really bad solution to that problem, because trivial status updates are in no way the same thing as being truly real with people. I suppose status updates could be used for good purposes (for example, my pastor has Facebook, and some of his that I've seen are challenging and personal), but this is certainly the exception rather than the rule and I doubt I'd be any better. In any case, I'd rather apply my efforts to real life, or to this blog. I like talking about big issues and hard topics, and I don't hear very much about that happening on Facebook, whereas my blog already provides me with a great space for this kind of thought. Also, I feel like most anything really true or profound on Facebook is just quickly drowned in the sea of immaturity. That's why I chose to keep my blog separate in the first place.

6. I can get all the real benefits of Facebook without having one. For example, because all my friends have one, if any of them post anything truly remarkable or abnormally hilarious, one of the others is sure to tell me about it. Alternatively, because my mom is Facebook friends with most of my actual friends, she also keeps me updated and lets me use her account to look at their pictures sometimes. That wouldn't even be necessary though, since Facebook members are still able to email me the link to their albums, which I can then look at if their privacy settings aren't on some very restricted level. Also, I can use email to get in touch with all my friends at once if I so desire. This works because Facebook users often like checking their email to see how many "notifications" they have. It makes them feel important. And finally, if I feel the need to express myself or have a personal profile page, this blog can serve that purpose quite ably. So in psychological terms, I guess you couldn't say I have a "felt need" for Facebook.

5. Farmville. This one should really be pretty self-explanatory, but I can't resist moving past it without saying this: Farmville is a pestilence in the land. Whoever unleashed this monstrosity should be tied down and forced to listen to its theme music until he repents and erases it from the world of Facebook. It shouldn't take that long; the whole "song" is basically a 4-measure loop of horribly twangy sounds that could pretty much reduce anyone to insanity in a matter of hours. (Can you tell that a certain unnamed but aforementioned family member of mine enjoys this game?) On a more serious note, this particular app is also pretty exemplary of the general trend of immensely time-wasting applications on Facebook. This just seems to me to be the most obviously pointless example, but actually the combined force of all these apps produces a powerful life-consuming time vortex in a lot of people's lives (see my post on video games for more on this). I feel like Facebook would prove to be an unnecessary temptation for me in this regard.

4. People accept Facebook without thought. One of the most disturbing things about Facebook to me is that no one seems to question anymore that this is what social interaction in the 21st century should be like. It bothers me that no one is really thinking about what Facebook really is and whether or not they want one. Most people who sign up for it are just blindly following the trend because they crave friendship and interaction, and being heavily marketed to and media-saturated all the while. I'm not abstaining from Facebook just to be somehow cool by breaking the trend and not doing what everyone else is doing. I've thought about what it is and decided that I don't want it. I've been recognizing lately my need for real friendship, and I don't think I can meet that need on Facebook. Now, I doubt anyone else would say they could either, but they might be unaware of how the shallow interactions they constantly engage in are muffling their true desire for deep relationship, truly knowing and being known. Just something to think about.

3. I'm scared I'd get addicted to it. I realize, of course, that it is quite possible to have a Facebook and not be addicted to it. However, I've heard far too many stories of people who hate how much time they've spent on it and wish they had never started. I've also heard many more stories about people who don't even realize how addicted they are to it and how much power it has in their life, which is even scarier. In any case, I feel like I have much better things to do with my time. That's why for me personally, Facebook is scary because I tend to be a little bit obsessive about having things perfect and organized and also about collecting things. I don't feel like I could ever be satisfied with Facebook if I hadn't collected every single person I know as a "friend." I'd want all my settings and profile perfectly in order, and I'd probably want to be the best at all the games too. Again, video games and I have a storied history that I never want to go back to. So all in all, I feel like I could end up wasting enormous amounts of time and really forgetting about letting God make all my decisions (which is my goal), and I don't even want to open the door for that to happen.

2. It's too late. I've been a Facebook resister and a fairly vocal critic of it for so long now that I can never get one. I don't think I'd ever be able to live it down, and I'd feel really stupid for saying all those things and then getting one anyway. I think it's safe to say I've passed the point of no return on this one. I'm in this for the long haul :)

1. I don't want "Facebook friends." Honestly, this is my biggest beef with Facebook. I really feel like it promotes shallowness and superficiality as the solution to the much deeper problems of our generation. We don't need status updates, we don't need to know what Disney character we are most like, and we don't need to express our true personality through our "pieces of flair" (although some of them are legitimately hilarious, and joking around online is great fun). What we need is real friendship with real people. How else are we expecting to "spur one another on towards love and good deeds" (Hebrews 10:24) or help heal our broken city? To do those things, we're going to have to get face-to-face and side-by-side and be much realer with each other than computer screens allow. (And yes, bloggers need to watch out for superficiality too :) I'm trying my best to practice what I preach and use my blog mainly as a tool for sparking real-life discussion and interaction with my friends.)

Now, obviously we can't have deep, hugely significant relationships with all the people we cross paths with. Even Jesus had different circles of friends: the multitudes followed him, but he placed special importance on the 72 he sent out, and the 12 disciples were his inner circle. Even within that, Peter, James and John were his three really close friends. So, Facebook or not, I think that's the example we should try to emulate. You know what? It's ok to have shallower, "Facebook friend" relationships. We just need to know where our real friends are, and we need to be real and really present (physically and emotionally) in their lives, even though that's hard. You know what else? It's also ok to have less friends. I just feel like the effort to fill the "friends list" causes too many people to have a set of "friendships" a mile wide and an inch deep. That will never satisfy a generation, a city, a nation looking for real love. We need real brothers and sisters and parents, real friends. "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother" (Proverbs 18:24). Can we learn to be that friend?

Inside Out

I'll start today's entry with a poem. It's the most recent one I've written, not old stuff like what I've posted so far. In fact, no one has ever read this poem before whichever one of you gets here first! It's the first one of its kind, a streetlights premiere. Here it is:

Inside Out


isolation underneath impressive
unknown against accomplishment

doing always more being less
hiding in the center of circles

victories full of sound alone
another world in control

politeness over perversion
impeccable outside filthy

confusion masquerading completion
pride intertwining pain

admiration in place
of love impossible
because artificial
because unknown

Don’t let me miss you.




So, this is a highly personal poem, but I share it because I think that it doesn't apply only to me. There are some lessons in it that I'd love to spare anyone else the pain of having to learn the way I did. I guess it's specifically about my ongoing journey of figuring out who I am and learning to actually be that person. I'll give a little bit of my own backstory as well as some insight into my strange poetic method in order to hopefully explain this little poem.

In terms of poetic style, this one is really kind of a personal anomaly. As most of you already know, I'm a big fan of complete sentences and good grammar, sometimes to the point of being a bit anal about it. So here we have this poem that completely resists both punctuation and normal syntax until its very last line. Guess which line of the poem I wrote first and which one is the most important to understanding the whole poem...

I made all those unusual (for me) stylistic choices for a reason though. The best way I can describe what I'm going for in this poem requires a visual aid. Unfortunately, this is the internet, so you'll have to make your own since I can't really show you. Don't worry though, it's very simple and I'll walk you through it. Ok, so to see what this poem is like, you need a sock. Any kind of sock, it doesn't matter, but it does need to be one you aren't currently wearing. I'll wait while you go get one.

...


Ready? Alright, hold the sock in front of you, so you can look straight down into the hole. That top circle of the sock is like the last line of my poem. So, grab the sock by that with one hand, and with the other push the rest of the sock up from underneath so it ends up inside out (get it?) and upside down. Notice, that hole is still in the same place, but now you can see a lot more of what used to be inside it. It's also much less pretty than the outside of the sock, and more disorderly. All that crazy fuzzy stuff you can now see, along with any accompanying dirt, sand, toenail fragments, etc., represents the rest of my poem. Wasn't that fun?

Anyway, the idea I'm going for is that in a good poem, each line that actually appears (e.g. Don't let me miss you) should have all kinds of stored up meaning underneath the surface. This poem takes that one particular cry of my heart and turns it inside out so you can see the mesh and mess that it actually consists of. I've written other poems sort of like this before, now that I think about it, with endings that encourage reinterpretation of the whole rest of the poem in their light. Maybe I can start a new genre! "Sock poems"...

On the more serious side, though, I think the underlying issue of this poem is one that everyone can identify with. All of us want so badly to be loved, and we will really do just about anything to make that happen. The problem is, who we are is not what we do. I've spent (read: wasted) so much time in my life trying to conform my image to what I thought people wanted me to be. I specifically remember in middle school looking at the "cool kids" who picked on me and my friends and analyzing what made them cool. "Oh, so cool kids wear this and act like this... I can do that!" And you know what the scary and really sad thing is? To a pretty great extent, I did.

Now, I had determined beforehand that I would use the coolness I would obtain to be nice to people those other kids would be mean to. I did end up being able to do that in some ways, but I also became in other ways just as judgmental as those people I hated. I knew all along that I was worth more than they were giving me credit for, but unfortunately I solved that problem by trying to attain what was valuable in their eyes, not by realizing their standard was twisted. So while I did eventually largely escape their judgment, I did so by buying into their bankrupt standards of coolness.

To make a long story very short, the result of my quest to remake my image was, on the surface, successful. People started to think I was cool, girls started to pay attention to me, and I was loving it. I used my sense of humor to make myself the center of attention and used my accomplishments and skills in an attempt to force people to respect me. Below the surface, though, something very different was going on. I was in the process of actively forgetting who I was.

I started getting more and more stressed out, and that led into deeper problems like depression. See, constantly managing what everyone is thinking about you is a heck of a lot of work, and it was burning me out while I was unaware. I was thinking about every single action and decision based on what it would do to the image I was portraying to everyone. In the process, I was losing touch with what I actually wanted. I became all the ugly things in my poem while looking like I was all their exact opposites. Worst of all, I wanted love, but all I got was admiration. But how could anyone have actually loved me? They didn't know who I really was! Many admired my fake front or thought it was cool and had things together, but who was underneath? I was largely unaware myself, so how could they know?

Thankfully, God still knew what was underneath. He let me get to the desperate end of my remaking of myself in my own image, and then he came at that front with a sledgehammer. He used people that knew me before my front and some that he just supernaturally told about my issues to challenge me about who I really was. I felt like huge chunks of me were falling off as what was inside was painfully brought out. He showed me through a series of very painful circumstances how broken I was (am) and gave me no other choice but to admit it.

Then the strangest things started to happen. I had thought that God (and everyone else) would reject me if they saw the brokenness I was hiding. But as I became more honest about who I was and began to take off my many masks, I felt God's love more and more. And, people started being able to actually care for me, and for some reason, they wanted to do so! There's really no other word for it but grace.

Here's the thing: if God created us, then it stands to reason that only he knows what we are really made for. Only the maker would. So I think the only way we can ever hope to love anyone else or be loved ourselves is to know God. If we know him, he can tell us who we actually are and give us strength to walk in it. This enables us to love others and be truly loved for who we are in return. It's change from the inside out.

For me, I tried to change my outside to find love, and all it brought was destruction inside. Don't waste your time with that! Jesus wants to move on the inside and let the change flow out in "streams of living water" (John 7:38). Recently a friend of mine reminded me of the prayer of St. Francis. This prayer talks about that kind of inside out change and reminds me a great deal of the streetlights' call, so I'll finish with it (slightly amended with a prayer of my own that should be quite obvious):


Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

God, O God, don't let me miss you.

Amen.

Audience

"Know your audience." It's one of the first things all aspiring writers are taught, but sometimes a rather tricky thing to do. When it comes to blogging, for example, how can you really know who you're talking to exactly? I assume that most (if not all) of the people reading this right now are my friends in real life, but I have no way of knowing which ones. And honestly, that makes it a little difficult to know what kind of tone to take as I talk about serious things that I really care about. I don't relate to all people the same way (although maybe I should).

So, I don't really know my audience for sure. I guess that just means I have to focus on posting things that can be beneficial to whoever might read them. I realize that not everything here will be a blessing to everyone, but that's ok with me. As I think about it, this blog really has several different purposes, each of which have to do with different potential audiences.

For example, sometimes when I write here it feels like I'm just shooting words out into the clear blue sky, never to be seen or heard from again. There is, in fact, the very real possibility that no one will read some of the things I post. Even if that were true, though, I'd still write here. One huge purpose of this blog, I'm finding, is that it helps me clarify my thoughts on some of the issues that will define my life-- things like how much I'll let God have control of my life, or how Cleveland can be changed. As I write, I'm forced to think about what is important enough to include, and it helps me realize key things that I often haven't even begun to think about when I start an entry. I'm also forming an archive of my thoughts that I can look back on and learn from later (it's my most successful attempt at journaling so far). I'm becoming a better writer too, since writing (like most other things) is something you can only really get better at by doing it. I wouldn't trade all those things for all the readers in the world.

Hypothetical scenarios aside, I do know that I have at least a few readers. For my friends and family, this blog is becoming a way that I can share my story with you. In the past, I realize I've been pretty bad at doing that, for which I hope all of you can forgive me. I hope also that what I write here can provide opportunities for face-to-face conversations about the things that really matter. Just as a disclaimer, when I write about what God is doing in my life here, please don't assume that I have this stuff figured out. I love to discuss and chop it up both one-on-one and in groups to gain the wisdom and perspective of the people I trust. In fact, as God is showing me more of who I actually am, I realize how much I've depended on my family, both natural and spiritual, all along. So if you're interested for whatever reason in sharing my journey, please come with me.

For anyone I don't know yet who (I hope) is reading this, I hope it blesses you. Whether or not you share my religious convictions that shape and influence this whole process, I hope you see authenticity and integrity in what I write. I don't have all the answers, but I can't imagine not looking for them. If you're looking, consider me your fellow searcher. I hope my words are encouraging, even if sometimes challenging. They challenge me. I'm sure you feel the darkness of life into which I do my best to bring a small light, and I hope you'll accept my invitation to do the same.

And for everyone, if you read this and like it, take time to say hi! Leave a comment after a post you like (or don't like). Challenge my thoughts and ideas (but feel free to agree with me as well)! Or, if you don't want to leave your thoughts in public for anyone to see, I love getting email too. Chances are you got this link from an email from me (it's in the signature line of every one I send), but if not, you can always get my address from my profile.

If you really like the blog, follow it! There are buttons that say "follow" in the very top navbar and in the right sidebar near the bottom. Or if you prefer to keep tabs on things using feeds, there's a link to subscribe to this site at the bottom of the page and in the sidebar as well. Either of those methods will make it so you don't have to guess when I've posted a new entry, which is a fairly impossible guessing game to play.

Just for those of you who like the guessing game though, I have added some features to the blog that you can look at even when I don't update it. The "poem of the day," as mentioned previously, randomly posts a great poem from the Library of Congress each day. I've also added a "word of the day" because I really like words, as I'm sure you all know by now. Increasing your vocabulary is fun! Yeah, I'm definitely an English major. Anyway, even more exciting, down at the bottom of the posts section (because it was too wide for the sidebar), there is now also a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip of the day! As you may or may not know, C&H is without question the finest comic strip ever to have existed, a topic on which I'm sure I'll write more later. If I were you, I'd come to my blog every day just for that.

Finally, to end my spiel of shameless self-advertisement, I now have in place a gadget in the right sidebar (and a button in the top bar) that will let you share my blog on your facebook or twitter. I don't have a facebook or twitter account and I'm not really a fan of either (another topic for a future post), but I'm not above using those resources to increase my blog traffic :) If you think what I'm writing would be interesting or important enough to share with your friends on your profile, please do. I think this stuff is important, or at least amusing, or I wouldn't be writing it. Any help you offer would be greatly appreciated.

So, that's it for now, my first effort towards both knowing and expanding my audience. By the way, this is post #10 on this blog, which makes it legit, not just a passing fancy (according to the highly scientific standard I just developed ten seconds ago). I feel like I've done all the cosmetic changes and content tweaks that I'll need for awhile, and I plan to keep writing here for a long time to come. Thanks for reading!