To Facebook...

...or not to Facebook?

That was my fiance Rob's knee-jerk reaction to The Social Network this afternoon.  As we're wrapping up our two-month-long road-trip (and feeling quite wrapped up in exhaustion), we snuck in a matinee earlier today of what has certainly become the "it" film of the year thus far.  Though the premise and hype are what certainly bought my ticket for me, I'm also a huge fan of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, one of the best dramatic writers of our time.  When it comes to witty, snap-fast, intelligent dialogue, he can't be matched.  And he delivered, with gusto, on The Social Network. 

Why, then, was Rob so ho-hum about it, while I was left surprisingly exhilarated in my expanded "knowledge" of Facebook's founding?  Because Rob has never been a Facebook fan.  He's a begrudging user.  It's just another LinkedIn to him, albeit a much more voyeuristic and silly one.  But I'm one of the originals.  I joined Facebook way back in its Stone Ages — 2006 — before my aunts and uncles and old teachers and your coworkers and neighbors down the street could join.  I was a new grad student at NYU, and this ingenious blue and white website seemed so fabulous, so 'where have you been all my life?'  It was such a thrill to look up old classmates and see where they were now and to virtually "network" with new friends and acquaintances at school.  It was a school thing, that's how Facebook started out, and when it stopped being a school thing and started becoming a phenomenon, it lost that quintessential "cool factor" that creator Mark Zuckerberg so ravenously craved in creating it (at least according to the movie).

Now everyone and their brother and his brother is on Facebook.  (Except my mom, of course.  There are a few hardened stalwarts still left out there.)  It's starting to feel gross to me now.  It has been for a while, though I've had trouble really pinpointing why.  Oh, it's all so self-centered and fake and impersonal, I'd argue with myself.  Or, now you have to 'watch what you say' because your 12-year-old cousin is on here now or Grandma, and updating your status to "Catherine could really use a freaking drink right now!" just isn't going to fade into obscurity as it once might have.  Facebook's become — maybe collectively, maybe individually — all posturing.  Like everyone's in one giant virtual high school together.  I have nearly 200 "friends" on Facebook, a few of whom I've never physically met but more of whom I spent years with in real school.  They never talked to me then, and they don't talk to me now.  Some made fun of me, but Facebook has brought us together as friends.  

I see the events of the past few weeks, with so many young kids taking their own lives because of bullying, and then I see The Social Network, and it all gives me pause.  Are many of the film's factual dramatizations worthy of debate?  Of course.  But getting an idea of how Facebook came to be helps to give me a little more insight into how and why I'm using it today.  It's akin to the rage that was drummed up with Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation.  Of course he had an agenda, but wouldn't you like to be able to sift through a lot of that and see some of the facts for yourself?  Knowing how McDonald's hamburgers are made may or may not affect your decision to consume them.  That's your choice.  But I like to at least get an idea of where things — and people — are coming from.  The Social Network has gotten me thinking critically.  I'm not going to delete myself from Facebook just yet, but I'm examining why the possibility of doing something so simple feels so brazen right now.

— Catherine :)

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