Facebook News Feed

We were recently talking about social media and facebook at a get together I had. Some people thought that looking at facebook news feeds just made them sad. It made them sad about all the things they ‘should’ be doing.

To an extent, I agree and understand where they’re coming from. When I first got here, and during college, I was always thinking about what I ‘should’ be doing. Whether that be traveling every weekend or going out dancing. I was concerned with trying to fulfill an image of what the typical experience was like. It didn’t bother me a lot, but it weighed upon me when I thought about what I could be doing. But I grew out of it. I realized pretty quickly, that this was just life here, it wasn’t something fantastically different, and I didn’t need to fulfill an image.

I don’t travel that much, because I have friends, a life, work, school, priorities here. There’s this image that we should travel when we go abroad, and for those who do that, great, I admire you. But I love staying at home and eating with friends. If I travel, I want it planned and everything sorted, I rarely get up and go. And I like company when I travel, so it’s even harder to plan.

But watching all my friends travel made me think, you should do that. Some of them go every weekend and don’t do their work or hang out with friends who won’t travel with them. I like hosting, I like being surrounded, sometimes, with people, food, and laughter.

So I’m kind of done with this whole image, this whole fulfilling the image of what an experience is supposed to be.

But back to facebook, for my friends it pointed out to them what they ‘ought’ to be doing here, or in their lives. They ‘ought’ to have children or be in a relationship or have a great job. But the small tidbits we see on facebook are just glimpses. They’re part of the poster’s image creation. It’s a second life where we see mostly the highlight reels, it’s where we see only what we are permitted to see, not even what we might want to see.

I don’t post that much on facebook. When I do sometimes, I find myself thinking, how will other people read it, how can I write something that people will enjoy and ‘like’. And now I never post.

I use that time to do something I enjoy.