The Facebook World We Live In

photo credit: Photomish Dan

What do you think was the first thing I did when I found out I had landed my first writing job? Jump up and down like I was at the end of a Rocky movie? Okay, yes, but what did I do after that? Call my friends? Call my family? Nope. I posted the news on facebook. Sure, later I called my family and a few of my friends, but without facebook there would’ve been no way to tell everyone I wanted to tell. How would I let my ex-boyfriends know how awesomely I was doing without them? How could I have made my old college classmates jealous? Who would’ve told that member of the family no was has spoken to in years? It would’ve been half the celebration if I couldn’t revel in it a little.

Facebook isn’t just for announcing your wins to the world (although that is one of my favourite features.) It has literally hundreds of applications, and it feels like everyday they are adding new ones, or improving the old ones. The most obvious one is connecting to friends and family all around the world. Where would we be without that connectivity? For one thing, more people would fall out of our lives and more relationships would die without that kind of social media. If a friend moved to Brazil, how would you stay in touch? The phone? Have you seen your phone bill after a few international calls. Emails? Sure, but it’s a pain in the butt to send out emails to everyone you know, and after a while it simply won’t happen. Letters? Lets get serious. With a little effort I’ve been able to able to preserve the relationships that otherwise would’ve died. It wasn’t usually a friend moving out of the country, but a favourite cousin who I rarely get to see, or a classmate who switched schools. Logging onto facebook can be like going to a reunion of all your favourite people.

To be fair, while facebook perfected this type of social media, it didn’t invent it (R.I.P Myspace and the like.) So why do people keep coming back to facebook while similar websites flounder and die? It might be because facebook lets you interact with your friends in a way most websites don’t. I’ll admit I never got the attraction of Farmville. There are some people who would rather set themselves on fire than see their strawberries go bad. That was never me. I was more of a Mafia Wars junkie. Getting money, trading weapons, completing illegal missions, and gaining power was more up my alley. The nice thing about it was that even though you were playing a game, you weren’t doing it in isolation or even with strangers. You got stronger with your real life friends. The best players were the one’s who gave and received grenades and rifles with their contact list. Or, for Farmville fans, traded crops and livestock. Even though you can’t go to the movies with your friend from Brazil, it still feels like you’re apart of each other’s lives.