The Lives of Others

You know that buzzing your speakers make if your cell phone is around? The iPhone is notorious for it. Anyway, it's like what I'd imagine having spider-sense would be like. You hear this slight warning buzz and then something happens two seconds later. After awhile, as soon as you hear that speaker static you're reflexively alert and ready to take a call. But then sometimes it's just a false alarm and unlike Spider-man, you're disappointed that danger (or a potentially exciting bit of fun) has passed.

After thinking about Facebook a little more, I think that maybe I should be an avid Facebooker. I mean, it's everything a community of friend blogs used to be -- but arguably better. You get updates on people's lives, you get to see who they're going out with, you get to anonymously life stalk near strangers, you get to interact with them on a semi-personal level, you get to try to out-quip each other. It's all fabulous.

The concept of public commenting still irks me to no end but face it, social networks are here to stay and it's either get on the bus or get run over. Sure, you can live in a Facebook-less life but at some point you just disappear off people's radar. Now that may sound just fine to some people but it's important that friends know what you're up to so that when you talk to them you can skip all that stuff. I mean, isn't Facebook simplifying the whole "so what have you been doing" part of friendship? I'm always for that.

I'd like to see, as a new social standard, people checking Facebooks (and blogs or MySpaces or recent emails or whatever) before actually meeting up in person. Cut out that half an hour of recapping life. Commence immediately to important things like what's on TV or just general hanging out. When will we replace Internet info with mouth-to-mouth info? Now I say, now.

And while I've often wondered how people have the time -- or inclination -- to label every person in their pictures, upon some reflection I think that's exactly something I'd do if there were no personal stigma attached to it. I mean, I like to keep meticulous track of who's who, where's where, and what's what. This is all something Facebook can do. So yeah, I'm gonna do it. Go through all my uploaded pictures and box out people's faces and show that "Hey, we're really friends because look, we're in the same picture!"

Good lord. Forty minutes later and here's what I've learned. Tagging pictures takes a long time. I tried to do a very thorough job and I was impressed by how Facebook was able to block people out so cleanly. Then I got to the group pictures and decided that okay maybe it didn't work so well. Facebook tagging is meant for photos with six or less people in it. This is the one that I gave up on. Yeah, try tagging out that baby. I have seen some people tag a picture of twenty-plus people though. Seemed pointless. I was tagged and I couldn't even recognize myself I was so small.

The thing with tagging people is that you've suddenly totally blown up their spot. Now their other friends know what they've done, or did. And what if they hate the picture of themselves? They can just remove it right? But does that say something about their friendship with you if they take themselves out of a picture? Also, what the hell do you do to a picture of (just) yourself? Tag it? It seems to blur some line between vanity and identification there. Well, I did it anyway because better to be vain than unnoticed right?

I learned that I do a lot of things with these people: Lynn, James, Hong, George, Amit. Hello to my Facebook Fave 5. I think I've tagged enough for a lifetime. If I can set aside the games, the useless widgets and gift giving and poking, the "Hi how are you, it's been so long!" comments, and the utter ridiculousness of it all, I have to admit that I love Facebook because it's the best (friend) gossip site ever. For that simple fact alone it's a worthy addition to a lifestyle.

Shocking information nugget of the day: Ameer doesn't have a Facebook. How is this possible? He's actually so way ahead of the curve that he's probably already on the next thing. I mean, how can my technology guru not be on Facebook? I tagged him anyway though because I'm a tagging machine.