I HATE FACEBOOK
“All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.” I think it’s a general consensus that there’s a lot wrong with modern day living in the capitalist framework and that technology is a part of this narrative. Social media is seen to sever genuine connection between human beings, TV brainwashes us, we filter our entire lives through the internet and spend the majority of our time either on or thinking about our laptops. In fact, my laptop is probably the most important thing I own – it stores memories (e.g. photos, writing, creative projects), it connects me to other human beings via skype or Facebook, and it gives me every piece of information I need to survive in the urban jungle – directions, instructions, and just general entertainment. But if we construe it differently – dependency on a given object or person isn’t intrinsically bad. As conscious human beings we’re designed to rely on others and to use tools. Mediating oneself via Facebook may seem disingenuous, but ultimately a wholly TRUE representation of your life or who you are as a person doesn’t exist. Of course we develop distinctive character traits and patterns of behavior, but who you are is also constantly in flux dependent on where you are in your life, your mood and how other people interpret or pick up on that. Though Facebook undoubtedly amplifies it, ego is a part of human existence and our behavior is always destined to be performative to at least some extent – that is both the curse and the blessing of the being-for-itself. The same applies to memory – my laptop, Facebook, email, blog and Tumblr store a lot of things I want to remember. Whether it be a specific quote, photo or article, or just items of general interest that I might want to come back to. But human beings have always stored memories in one way or another – whether through photos, writing or totems.