Lie Feed

by ajacart

Facebook has always been a confusing medium for me. Like any of my vices it’s something that I find myself saying I hate, but time and again I while away hours skimming the breadth of the society I’ve accrued over the past six years, glued to the screen while laying in bed or while a cursor silently blinks halfway through the introduction I’m supposed to be writing. “Friends” of mine consistently post either things that make my blood boil with rage to the point where I’ve drafted an angry response I’ll never post or things that make me blow a short gust of amusement out of my nose. These are not things I feel immediately drawn to, yet my finger is so quick to the ‘f’ button on my keyboard as soon as I open my browser.

This confusion often leads me to thinking about the constitution of myself when on facebook. The persona I have created on this standardised rubrick for capturing lives by no means reflects my inner self, or even my outer one for that matter. Then again, when at a party or in a tangible social scenario I do the same thing–holding my tongue to keep from saying something questionable, or ruffling my hair just right. I do these things somewhat subconsciously on the spur, with people directly in front of me, but with the wonder of Facebook I have ample time to pick a cool and quirky profile picture or calculate a funny yet cavalier response (with the added bonus of seeming as though I don’t frequent the site as much as I do.) I struggle with this approach to being a social being despite how naturally it comes to me–Blaise Pascal’s philosophy in his final years seemed centered around self-honesty as opposed to self-love. He claimed that we love ourselves too much and to such a degree that we deny and hide our faults from others. Fooling ourselves and others alike whereas it would be more fruitful for us to accept our faults and to share other people’s faults with them. He thinks we act unjustly by doing otherwise: “Man is then only disguise, falsehood, and hypocrisy, both in himself and in regard to others. He does not wish any one to tell him the truth; he avoids telling it to others, and all these dispositions, so removed from justice and reason, have a natural root in his heart.” (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm) I do feel like a lier on Facebook especially, crafting a mask for others to see while I sit behind my computer chalking up likes. 

After watching Eli Pariser’s TED talk I wondered whether Google, Facebook and the likes are creating my filter bubble based on my shadow or by who I really am. I at one point, for the briefest of times, even worried that if I angered Facebook they’d expose me as the fraud I am to all of my “friends”, for they surely must know the real me–things would come tumbling down fast, I bet. Then I realised that the things I post to Facebook are so banal and inane that there can’t be many friends of mine whose own internet persona motivates Facebook to present to them my product. Then I thought that this may be the reason for how few ‘likes’ I get. Then I finally returned to thoughts about calculation–it seems as though there is no communion with Lejeune’s “Autobiography Pact” here, everything is recreated glamorously, with a flair, so as to make you stand out. It’s tawdry and painful to see yourself doing this, but with each ‘like’ I certainly feel as though I’m climbing some sort of imaginary ladder somewhere. I remembered reading this (http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/10/30/like-facebook-and-schadenfreude/) article about Facebook, and while it is not wholly about the craft of Facebook, there are good insights into it. Furthermore it addresses the other facet of Facebook I feel drawn to–Schadenfreude! But that’s for another time.