Q's View on Social Networking Websites

I am inclined to side with Betty White when she said
on Saturday Night Live last May that she thought Facebook™ “sounds like a huge waste of time!” While I have an account of my own, started only to keep up with the group I went to England with during my junior year, the Website itself does not play well with the government security software I am obliged to put on my home computer; we wouldn’t want me to infect an important government computer system because of something I brought in from home, now would we? Because of this user-hostility, I rarely use Facebook, and have never had a MySpace™, instant messaging, or other social networking account. I am virtually socially retarded, so to speak.
As is often the case, however, my Better Half, the person who makes me complete, the Doctor Jekyll to my Mister Hyde, does not share my opinion of Facebook and the many offspring sites that have come from its virtual loins. Left to her own devices, and free from work or any favors I might ask of her, she is just as likely to park herself in front of her computer and cyber-chat with her pals on Facebook, as she is to watch any of the number of television shows she follows. She also watches Survivor, The Amazing Race, Desperate Housewives, Ellen, and several other shows so that I won’t have to; her willingness to sacrifice herself for me is just one of the many reasons I love her.

As a medium wholly shaped by the very users who participate in it, Facebook is likely one of the best environments for someone pursuing the foundations for a psychology research paper, or some other aspect of human-interaction study. Other than the potential intrigue that such academic review might hold for someone, however, I simply find it boring as Hell. Maybe it is a guy thing, but having access to a blow-by-blow account of other people’s lives kind of keeps me from living my own, you know? Not that I have much of a life mind you, but what I do have would certainly be less productive if I wasted innumerable hours chatting about minutiae that I would likely find meaningless even if I was seeing it in person! I would rather go visit with people, sans computer screen.

Every Internet pundit I have researched on this topic – all three of them – is of the opinion that Facebook and its competing social outlets are here to stay. I have to wonder if the good people at Pixar were inspired by such sites in their conceptualization of the space cruise-liner’s daily routine in WALL-E. When I saw all those fat people floating in their hover-chairs eagerly consuming everything that flashed on the screen in front of them, I simply had to wonder if this was a commentary on our society and the directions we might be heading as well. . . .(Is there indeed a darker side to Disney?)