December 3, 2008
I'm not a fan of social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. Why? Well, there are many reasons why living a fake life over a computer does not appeal to me.
First off, I like lying to people the old fashioned way, face to face. There's no risk in putting up a profile on the web and claiming to be an ultra rich Formula 1 racer living in Lexington, Ky. Walking up to a girl in a bar and telling her that you are a pediatric surgeon and the nephew of Warren Buffet takes guts.
These social networking sites serve as America's liar's platform. You can be anybody you want online and nobody is going to know the difference. Take my wife, for example. She's got a Facebook page and routinely gets messages from guys she knew in high school and college. Who would have guessed, that they are all extremely wealthy and successful? So wealthy and successful that they must try to talk married women living more than 500 miles away into dating them. Sounds a little fishy to me.
What are these guys going to do when a woman actually meets them in person? I know very few "investment bankers" who still work the door at various bars on 6th Street.
The first rule of social networking is this: Everybody is lying their ass off in order to somehow build some kind of false sense of self-esteem they can not achieve in real life.
I also think it's important for people to understand that if I didn't keep up with you after high school or college, then I really don't want to hear from you now. Something didn't click for us back then and you need to accept that. I may be older and fatter, but I'm still as intolerant as I was back then.
When I signed your yearbook all those years ago, that was my goodbye to you. Notice I didn't write, "Why don't you bug me over the Internet 10 years from now so we can reminisce about how you obviously found our relationship a lot more special than I did."
I'm against leaving myself open to be found by every loser from yesteryear yearning to have some imaginary high school relationship with me again. I've got a wife and two friends and that's one too many friends and one too many wives (just kidding honey! You're the best! Who am I kidding, you're not even reading this, you're on Facebook).
Part of the whole social networking society is updating everyone on what you are doing and how you are feeling through your online profile. This is something that these people update every 10 minutes throughout the day.
Why anyone would care or want to relate that information to de facto strangers is a complete mystery to me. No matter what they claim they are doing at that moment it seems as if I could guess what they were doing without them telling me – screwing around on their social networking site.
Frankly, I'm not that starved for attention. If I do feel I need attention I do what I always do – email Newspaper Tree staff and falsely claim that someone has been arrested in the FBI investigation. That never ceases to entertain both me and them (mostly me).
There's something wrong with people if they feel the need to update people on what they had for lunch. I do not know what worse; you thinking someone cares or the fact that someone actually does.
I find the inclusion of pictures to these social networking sites is the most disturbing part of the phenomenon. It's not that pictures of people you don't know doing things you can't do in places you never been are all that bad. It's the collective denial of social network users that they are actually trying use racy pictures of themselves to get the attention of the opposite sex.
This is most common with women. A quick review of the average Facebook or MySpace page for any female will reveal dozens of pictures of them in their "best outfits." By "best outfits" I mean whatever tops make their boobs look like they're about to escape to visual freedom. You won't find many pictures of girls in sweaters and warm-ups. I wonder why?
Because the very concept of social networking for women is about attention it behooves them to appeal to the animal-like instinct of men by posting pictures of themselves. Thanks to the affordability and availability of the Internet, women need not fit into some stereotype of how they should look. Every woman out there of any shape or size has a chance of getting some kind of attention from the millions of desperate men who'd compliment a hippo in a miniskirt if they thought it might get them laid.
You may be sitting out there wondering what men want out of social networking sites if women are looking just for attention. Men are looking for sex. There's no good reason for men to be sharing photos of themselves with other men on the internet. Men share photos of the deer they shot last fall over a beer in the garage. They use social networking sites to do what they can't do very well at bars in real life – hit on women with the hopes of tricking them into getting naked within 20 feet of them.
Men have a slim chance of getting sex from the women they shower attention on using these sites. Most of the time that sex is at gunpoint after he drives 1,500 miles to convince her that they should be more than just "Internet pals."
Do I have to explain to any of you how social networking sites let pedophiles get access to naïve young girls craving the attention of boys? That's probably the most unfunny part of social networking.
The newest addition to the social networking sites is the business-minded communities. LinkedIn comes to mind for most of you, I'm sure. That site lets you identify other people you know doing things that have nothing to do with what you do so you can bother them with some nonsense about you knowing someone they know. Yes, I actually have no idea what LinkedIn does.
The best I can tell, LinkedIn lets you beg people you don't know very well for a job when you need one. It of course also serves as a way for men to meet women they desire to have sex with.
I have no use for meeting people online. I can dislike people in real time, face to face. People are farming out human interaction to digital relationships based on lies and vanity.
Popularity shouldn't be right at your fingertips. It should be gained the traditional way – by back stabbing your friends and stepping on people that are uglier than you. This pretend world of perpetual high school is destroying the framework of the hell that is our American social system.
The days of the socially awkward in-person introduction to the person you have a crush on have given way to lies about financial status and photoshopped boobs all sent instantly and safely from the comfort of your mother's basement. What has this world come to?
I'd just like to assure all of you that in this digital age I still prefer to meet groups of people the old fashioned way, in AA.