“Its official, Facebook is a lifestyle. Two hundred million people, including the Pope, could not be wrong.” This is how one columnist in the Daily Nation’s Friday pullout magazine Zuqka recently put it in a story aptly titled (you guessed it right) “Why I Live In Facebook”.
With your indulgence, I beg to lend my two-cent worth of an opinion to this already too-much talked of subject. For starters, I disagree with the writer on one account. Facebook is not a lifestyle, it’s a movement! Yep, a movement disguised in the form of an addictive ‘social networking’ platform whose hooked membership ‘interact’ on a remote portal. That’s my definition for Facebook!
So Facebook has signed up its 200 millionth member, big deal huh! The trajectory of my warped discourse may already sound like a bare knuckled assault on this digital-age piece of technology that is quickly isolating its unwitting prescribed membership of the very thing that they seek – human contact.
Karl Marx (the real one - not that lunatic former University of Nairobi student’ leader’) once said, “Religion is the opium of the masses”. I paraphrase: The so called ‘social networking’ sites ala Facebook, Twitter and the motley of interactive on-line platforms are the opium of the masses in a digitally controlled world.
This piece is not meant to endear me to the swelling numbers of Facebook addicts. So without butting an eyelid I’ll proceeed to drop my shocker of bombshell. Truth of the matter is, this whole Facebook takeover really pisses me off at times! The world could still spin and go round without Facebook. Come to think of it, seriously, the world actually did spin and go round before this five year old start-up was born in a dorm room thanks to two Harvard University students.
At the risk of becoming the butt of jokes I dare say that I got no love for Facebook. Infact, for very obvious reasons, I think Facebook is somewhat overrated and overused. As preposterous as it may yet sound, I get this feeling that at this very moment, some geek is locked up somewhere engrossed in the encoding process of a new software that will soon make Facebook look like ancient history. Then – and thankfully so - all this talk of Facebook will cease to be. Call me old-fashioned all you want, but I still value human contact in my social interactions. Living all my life in cyberspace (or to put it better, living inside a tube/cable) is the least of my fantasies.
Then again, after spending some bit of time trawling Facebook (ok, I’ve blown my cover here. Am also on Facebook – as a faceless user though), what I find day in day out is myriad of very personal small talk. Surely, if am having a bad hair day at the office must I stand on the roof top to literally tell it to the birds, some in as far flung places with strange names like Timbuktu, Ouagadougou or even Guyana? It takes some bit of twisted psychology for one to claim he or she craves for on-line interaction with unknown strangers, yet everyday all you see around in social places is aloofness, which for lack of a better word is simply baffling.
Why is it that everywhere, be it in a shared seat in the re-emerging overcrowded ‘matatus’ of Nairobi or on a squeezed church pew we are ever ill at ease to look straight in the eye of the person next who in return also peers straight ahead, pretending to be preoccupied in his own thoughts? There is no denying that we are all guilty of this sin at one time or the other. Yet we can’t stop gossiping in those endless back-and-forth trivial exchanges on Facebook.
Added to this are my reservations about plastering an imaginary ‘wall’ with my highly prized photographic profile. Maybe am being a bit paranoid, but with stuff like Photoshop readily available in the public domain, some pervert out there might just relish the chance of doing a ‘Father Kizito’ using my snaps. True, it’s a crazy world! The only thing that I can ever upload to Facebook is a universal symbol like the crucifix or a more cryptic code like my fake signature (which I hardly ever use). Photos are a no-no for me. My relic photo album does it just as well for me at the moment.
But above all else what I find most annoying whenever I login to Facebook is that the damn thing never stops displaying the photo of a chic with whom a one night stand escapade never quite turned out well. It would be an understatement to say that it’s a tragedy that ever since I signed up on Facebook this heartbreak chic’s face keeps popping on my side bar. All that talk of smart technology yet the dumb software can’t even perform a simple vetting process to build a more desirable list of suggested friends!
Enough said about Facebook. All my misgivings not withstanding, though, I won’t dare to attempt converting a movement that commands a greater global following than the Roman Catholic Church. Only those with a bigger heart - and more daring – than Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo can think of attempting that stunt. Live and let live, is my guiding principle. So to all Facebook faithful - continue indulging in your addictive habit until it consumes you!
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