I am writing this after finishing watching The Social Network for the fifth time, pondering the numerous times in the movie they associate Facebook with the word “cool.” Don’t get me wrong; I’m one of those people who would be dying of boredom at my desk, and with the intention of checking Yahoo! Answers for my symptoms, I’d end up on Facebook trolling through pictures of some friend of some friend of some girl’s white trash wedding photos, just like everyone else.
Camouflage tuxedos — who does she think she is?
I probably shouldn’t be getting medical advice from WildBoi4856 either, but that’s not my point.
It’s been almost a decade now since Facebook graced us with its presence, and after almost 10 years, what does Mark Zuckerberg’s school science project that was originally described as “cool” look like?
Facebook is a way for middle-aged women to live out their most sensual and risqué fantasy without being judged: The fantasy of raising and maintaining a virtual farm.
Nothing is sexier than fully-grown barley crops, and that is a fact.
But wait, there’s more! Facebook is also a free form of psychiatry. There is no healthier and more effective form of communication than writing 500 words about how your great aunt twice removed died 11 years ago today and you are “still coping” than by posting it online so 200 of your closest friends can “like” it.
Also, Facebook basically invented passive-aggressiveness. I’ll admit I’ve taken part in it. It may come as a shock to you, but spewing death wishes at people while withholding nothing but their names is about as inconspicuous as Rick Santorum at a Gay Pride parade.
Let’s also talk names. I know of someone whose “middle name” on Facebook is WhatYourGirlLikes, which I think may be of German origin. Someday, a job recruiter will be snooping through the Facebook pages of recent applicants and pick that one out of the crowd, obviously.
Anyone can be a political activist on Facebook, as well, from the privacy of their parents’ basement. Nothing will get Congress’ attention more than you posting that you don’t care how much bigotry fuels the fryers at Chik-fil-A, you’re going to eat there anyway, gosh darn it, because you’re heterosexual and hungry.
Let us also never forget that Facebook thrives because you can’t spray mace over the Internet. Liking 27 photos of a girl that she posted three years ago is a completely safe and discrete way of saying, “Hey you, I’m making the effort to dig into page 17 of your photo album so I can look at you lying on the beach on your spring break trip to Cabo when you were 17 … want to go out sometime?”
It is exclusively online. Facebook also allows us to do the exact opposite of what Facebook was made for — to become an anti-social recluse. If you’re like me, you have the intense urge to strike up a conversation with a stray cat that passes you on the street, but when an acquaintance does the same you suddenly have to type a long email on your phone while simultaneously losing the ability to read cellphone print from anywhere further than the tip of your nose.
With Facebook, we can all pretend we don’t dislike our fellow man from behind a computer, and that is an incredible thing.
Jackie Runion is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University and a columnist for The Post. Tell her how you use Facebook at jr178409@ohiou.edu.
