Staffer Shares Social Network Experiences

My experience with the narcissism known as social networks first began in 5th grade with a program called Bebo. The website was the big thing at my school and it seemed everyone but me had one. Being a fifth grader, I wanted to feel included, so I joined. Three minutes into the sign-up sheet I was already creeped out by the information Bebo was asking for: age, hometown, school. Feeling sneaky I set my age to 100 and set my hometown as London, England, just to be safe. Next were the personal questions: what do you like to do, what activities are you involved in, who are your best friends? I didn’t know why they were asking me these things but I complied and filled out the form. Pretty soon I was bombarded with posts from my friends.
“Just got a puppy :D”
“I’m dating Billy!”
“Today sucked, I hate everyone!”
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say so I posted the most obvious thing I could think of.
“Just got a Bebo!”
The next few days I stared at the computer, adding friends, writing on pages, posting Youtube videos. At school the conversations were all about new Bebo backgrounds and “Did you see my post?” Nerdy as it was, I just wanted to pay attention in class.
I accidentally deleted my Bebo when I attempted to change my age to 1-year old instead of 100. I was seriously bummed at first because I had so many Bebo Points and I’d never get them all back! But as the days went on I realized that I didn’t need to constantly check Bebo.
Jump forward four years. As I was asking my brother to use the computer I saw he had something called Facebook on the screen. He was looking at photos and writing on something called a ‘wall.’
“What’s that?”
“It’s this stupid thing called Facebook.”
“Where do you get one?” Apparently two questions was one too many because he then told me to ‘bugger off.’ I went to my mother’s computer and typed in Facebook in Google. Three hours later I had signed up and now any ‘friend’ could see a full list of things I ‘love’ to do, who my friends were and what kind of music I liked.
“Just got a Facebook!” I was beginning to see a pattern.
Gradually I lost interest in Facebook, the constant updates from ‘friends’ about how much their life sucked or how they can’t stop thinking about that one guy, photos of ‘totally awesome’ parties and spam posts on my wall were all too much. I hadn’t posted for a year and I was sick and tired of getting email alerts about my friends commenting on my wall. As tempting as posting may be, those who post should probably realize that, honestly, no one cares. Your Facebook ‘friends’ are too busy trying to come up with a cool post to pay attention to the one you just worked on for twenty minutes. Stop posting photos of yourself in indie poses. Stop writing ambiguous statuses and hoping someone will ask what’s wrong. And stop, for the love of god, sending me Farmville requests.

Signed,
A Facebook Suicidal