The Complex

Maybe I'm the weird one. But I just don't understand a lot of the things that my contemporaries do. Something is just wrong with the way we entertain ourselves. Specifically I would like to address what we'll call the Facebook/Myspace complex. These two dot-coms are the behemoth heavyweights in the new age of internet-social networking as far as I am aware. I used to be a casual visitor to these set-ups, but over the past few years my usage been forced to wane for a number of reasons which aren't really the point of this diatribe.
First off, I would like to point out the irony of the term internet-social network. The word social is generally used to describe behavior that occurs in the company of others. Whether or not the typing of nonsensical internet banter on someones wall constitutes socializing, I will leave up to the jury to decide, but I respectfully reject that notion. As I sit now on my couch typing, I just don't feel social. The fact that I'm on this particular .com as opposed to another is going to have very little bearing on those feelings. No matter what website I choose to go on, I will still be here on my couch exactly where I wanted to be, enjoying the quiet and collecting my thoughts.
I have really come to dislike people who take internet life too seriously. I want them out of my life for fear that they will poison mine with their tomfoolery. I overheard a conversation a while ago that changed my life for the worse.
I overheard two mid-twenty-something young ladies who appeared to be grad students of some kind talking at a bar when one of them put forth some supposedly factual information that the other found somewhat shy of believable. Upon hearing the disbelief voiced by her friend, the first young lady adamantly retorts "Ya-huh, it's all over facebook!!"
After my own disbelief was overcome by my convincing myself that she couldn't have possibly just cited an internet website as social authority, the first semi-coherent sentence I was able to arrange in my mind involved repeated use of the words 'fuck', 'cretin' and 'loser'. Followed immediately by 'God help us' and my subdued resignation to the fact that this very conversation was probably taking place thousands of times a day nationwide.
I'm sure I'm the minority in having this feeling, but you simply cannot be a functional adult human if you can't mentally separate real life from cyberspace. It doesn't matter if it's a social network, let it stay on the fucking internet. It's bad enough that this nonsense exists, but at least it used to be confined to a computer screen. You bring it out of that little box and you fuck up the whole order of things.
And as a sidenote, nothing good comes from the myspace/facebook complex. Name one good thing that has happened in your life as a result of it. You get reminders of your internet friends birthdays? Is that the best you can come up with? The whole thing just has setup written all over it. Can you imagine how many relationships and friendships have ended off of nothing more than the strength of the internet? Just think about it: the incriminating message written on your girlfriend's wall; the ill-timed drunken photo that some conniving frat-party smut tagged you in on a night that your boyfriend thought you were home studying for your finals; the bump-out of the myspace top 10. The list goes on. Why even tempt fate, hasn't she taught you she's not to be taunted? Furthermore, these sites are fertile breeding grounds for the elusive internet-weirdo-creep-fuck, and nobody likes that guy.
Anyway, all of this stuff is too much. Do you think it's ever gonna end? We can't really enter professional adult life and still feel the need check our myspace friend requests from someone we haven't spoken to in 4 and a half years (invariably because you never really liked them), or some creep who saw you out and about 3 weeks ago and tracked you down through mutual friend pages, can we? But my personal favorites are these people. On the rare occasion when I go on this rant in person, I always encounter one of these, "Yea, myspace is creepy, I only deal with facebook." And then nod their head comfortably, as if to say 'I'm a safe internet weirdo-creep-fuck'. They're the same fucking thing, don't be delusional. Some people love it, I just ain't one of them, and I will continue to impune. But if that's your style to be on there several times a day, do you. Just please, please, don't drag it into the real world.