The Face Value of Facebook

I work alone with a Mac and a broadband connection from my apartment, away from the bustle of a newsroom and untouched by office intrigues, with only the occasional company of a housekeeper.

But I rarely feel alone.

In fact, sometimes it feels as if a lot of my time is being spent in something resembling a campus student center, where people kill time between classes, trading banter and gossip or just making passing remarks about what someone’s wearing.

Except these are no students and the center exists only in the virtual realm of the Internet. I am talking about Facebook, the social networking site du jour.

If you are not among the 130-something million members of this site, or have not had a friend or spouse try to coax you into signing up, you probably have no idea what I am talking about.

Basically, Facebook is a free-access website where members create profile pages, connect with other members or invite people to join, and exchange private or public messages.

Founded in 2004 by a 21-year-old Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg, it has grown from an on-campus service to an US$8 billion Internet enterprise with a network of users spanning generations and continents.

Zuckerberg, now the CEO of the company, has described his brainchild as more than just a social networking site but a “utility”.

He claims that 60 percent of members return at least daily to see what friends are doing (the site updates you on the activities of those in your network), check and send messages, or just update their profile status (e.g.: Devi “is stuck for words”).

I can tell you that at least half of the 250-something people in my Facebook network do just that. It is the first site they go to after checking their email and probably the last one they check before they switch off the computer.

You may scoff at me if you are one of those conspiracists who believe the CIA is behind every social networking site, or a cynic who thinks only suckers leave behind personal cookie crumbs on the net.

But frankly, I think sites that keep people connected like this are one of the best communication inventions of my time.

I joined Facebook last year after attending yoga training in Bali as a way to keep in touch with my fellow trainees from all over the world. Pretty soon I was using it to search long-lost friends, former colleagues, ex-boyfriends or crushes, and any other person I wanted to reconnect with whom I could not find on Google or Classmates.com.

Once I found one, it led me to a whole slew of other people from the past I had never thought I would come across again.

Indeed, networking sites are a great resource to find people, even those you would never think would join one. A couple of people I could not find for my articles turned out to be Facebook users, and they replied to my messages for an interview.

Some politicians, including those with 2009 presidential ambitions, have created Facebook profiles to connect to as many people as they can.

I like to keep my network small and intimate – though I did accept the invitation to be friends with a few people I have never met because they seemed to have a legitimate second or third degree connection to me.

But Facebook changes the nature of communicating even with people you know or meet every day. Although it has a personal message feature (like an email), most users would rather leave remarks on public walls for other people to see.

I find this less personal approach – more casual, if not extroverted – relieves the communicator not only of making small talk, but also of any follow-up commitment.

In other word, my Facebook friends would rather leave fleeting comments on my earlier status (“that’s a rare one for you”), rather than carrying on a conversation about writer’s block by email or messenger.

Better yet, why bother with words when you can just poke people, throw them Sarah Palin, send them good karma or recruit them for your army of zombies – all done on a virtual level of course.

What I find discomforting, however, is reconnecting with long-lost friends only to have no follow-up communication with them.

There was a former close friend I had been seeking for some time with whom I was reconnected in Facebook. Out of the excitement of finding her, I wrote her an email, detailing what had happened in my life in the past 15 years and asking her how her life had been.

She wrote me back two weeks later, excusing herself for being busy and promising to write back (which she never did).

I wondered whether she had something to hide about her life that made her reluctant to share with me. It occurred to me, too, that maybe we did not part agreeably when we stopped being friends, and that maybe some people hold grudges longer than others.

These days, unless I know I will get a reply, I don’t bother writing to such people anymore. After all, communication is a two-way street.

Which leads me to another social problem that can arise out of such a communal way of socializing.

One of the most favorite applications of Facebook is the Photo Album in which people can upload photos, tag people they know in the pictures and leave it open for others to see and leave messages.

If you are tagged unwillingly, you can remove yourself, but sometimes the damage has already been done. Some of the group pictures my friends uploaded feature me in unflattering poses.

Also, seeing pictures of your friends at a recent party to which you were not invited could bruise your ego a little.

Yes, be warned, sometimes Facebook feels like a high school popularity contest all over again. Even if you do not want to partake in it, you cannot help but feel like you are being judged and compared.

An application that allows friends to compare their friends, for example, will remind you who within your network is the most attractive, has a better sense of humor or is the more preferred bed companion.

As for me, apparently my friends think I am the best person to be stuck in handcuffs with – whatever that means.

Now, you may ask, with our life surrounded already by phone text messages, email and instant messengers, do we need another mode of online communication to connect us?

I am of the “more-the-merrier” school of thought, though of course there is a line to be drawn.

After years of refusing to join other networking sites, my husband recently became a member of Facebook and soon became hooked.

Once we found ourselves leaving messages on each other’s virtual walls, although we were only separated by a real wall in our home.

When your domestic life comes to that, perhaps it is time to switch off.

+ Devi Asmarani
Illustration by Lucynda Gunadi

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