Friday, October 8, 2010

500 Million People Can't Be Wrong

So. Yeah. Geo, Tina, Sanna, Beckah, and I just saw the Facebook movie, a.k.a. The Social Network. I am a girl divided. I think I may have taken it a little too seriously. I am probably addicted to Facebook. It’s genius, I love it, and the first thing I did after the movie was to check FB. But this movie shed light on the birth of it, and, even though it’s just a movie, it wasn’t exactly pretty. Then on the ride home, I was all “Isn’t it ironic that one of the most socially awkward dudes ever created the biggest social media phenomenon in the history of time?” And Geo was all “Take it easy, dude. Facebook basically defines our generation.” Then I was all “Yeah, apparently we’re a generation of minnows.”

You’ve seen a school of minnows. All hanging out together, swimming along just fine. All of a sudden, there is the most minute shift in the water, and the minnows just take off in search of something else. All at once, they’ve left behind their pursuit of, like, a dead fish or some other tasty treat, and move on. Quickly. We are minnows, people. We flock to Facebook, Twitter, blogs, apps. You name it, we adopt it.

Okay, I digress. Back to Facebook. Facebook is where I learned that Michael Jackson died, that my old boyfriend got married, and that Randy Moss was coming back to the Vikings. It’s pretty much my most trusted news source. (Well, Face book and Twitter.) It is also where I learned that I should not take profile-view pictures of myself. People keep posting them, and I keep having to untag myself in them. My nose could cut a diamond.

Anyhoozle (sorry, watching a movie about a dude who is spazzy, disconnected, and can’t complete a train of thought must have rubbed off on me), after the movie, I discovered that I was a pretty late adopter of Facebook. Geo and Sanna were using it in college. I didn’t catch on until well into my first job AFTER college. Oddly, I caught on to MySpace like a moth to a flame. But for some reason, Facebook eluded me. But then, for some reason (I actually think I set it up to Facebook-stalk someone), I created my FB account and never looked back. The next thing I knew, I was teaching my mom how to upload a profile picture to her FB account. Crazy. My old roommates dog has an account. I read this morning that something like 5% of FETUSES have Facebook accounts. It’s getting ridiculous. It’s just, it’s mind-bottling. Facebook is the Pony Express, telephone, camera, and morse code of our time. Combined. How could it ever go away? It is, dare I say, too big to fail. Facebook is now the OCEAN that all the minnows live in.

Ugh! I’m such a slave to the machine! I’m a sheep! And yet? I can’t stop myself. Throughout the course of writing this blog tonight, I’ve checked Facebook about 4 times. I’ve gotten texts alerting me that someone has written on my wall, and taken the time to go back in to Facebook to check it out. I don’t know why, either. Like to MAKE SURE someone actually wrote on my wall? No, it’s an impulse. I am Pavlov’s dog. I hear the stirrings of social updates, and I must eat them (whaaaat?).

So, Mark Zuckerberg (alleged creator of Facebook), you’ve really done it now. You’re in this for life. If you ever try and take Facebook away from me, you will be paying my therapy bills. Until then, keep it up, stop trying to make reconnect with people I’m purposely keeping my distance from, and we’ll all be A-OK. All 500 million of us are depending on you. Good lord, I’m scared.

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