Facebook Status Update

I'm on The Facebook.

I'm updating my status, because that's part of the deal with The Facebook. It's the perverse cyber-window into which we allow ask friends and "friends" alike to peep.

But the status update is somehow more than that. Use it enough and it becomes the more real looking-glass through which we not only see ourselves, but through which we want the world to see us.

Too much gravitas? Maybe. After all, life is not about what we're doing at any given moment. But then again, grow your sample size of moments enough (particularly away from the witty or flattering ones), and suddenly it is. Because when we add up all our moments — especially the notable ones, both good and bad — that's all we have. And so, it's something.

What makes an update-worthy moment? Ultimately, it's up to each user, but as one of those ("We few, we happy few") without constant smartphone contact to The Internets, I just smile and nod thankfully when confronted with the more inane moments in my life. Without an uplink, I often find myself blessedly edited by circumstance. Because, in the moment, information that might seem necessary to share with one's extended circle of peers is, at second glance, generally not.

But arguably, it is precisely the small, inane moments that tend to paint a more clear picture of who I am: "BK is having irreconcilable differences with the hotel shower" maybe; or "made a slight error while cutting his hair and now fears Vanilla Ice comparisons"; or "is doing dangerous things involving a large pine tree, a saw and a ladder"; or "is trying not to stare at an Israeli waitress who looks like Angelina Jolie's more natural looking, younger sister." (All of those true at some point in the past several months, by the way.)

[BK is hoping that last one does not get him in trouble at home.]

We have always had some say in how we define our public selves, but our accessibility is so much broader these days — a phenomenon that gives us both more and less control over our own message (to use the language of marketing and politics). And in our present star-fucking culture, our default is to strive to be the focus of at least our own small pond.

After all, what is blogging, if not just that?

[BK pauses, self-referentially.]

But what and when to edit ourselves when life in front of so many new lenses has become the norm? I'm not sure, but thank god I'm already happily married, middle-aged, and mature enough for even momentary reflection, because if not, I'd surely have committed social suicide dozens of times by now.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube alone might constitute half of all web use among many teenagers, but I imagine they also offer today's yutes the constant threat of painful infamy. [BK is perhaps projecting here.] Because the flipside of saying "Look at me, look at me!" has forever been that, well, folks might actually look.

And then what?

Hmm... "BK is pulling a substantial quantity of lint from his belly button" maybe; or "should be able to turn the channel during a Man v. Food marathon"; or "worries he has become That Guy Who Picks His Nose at Traffic Lights"; or "should not have trusted that last fart."

Comments

[awsak]

AS spilled coffee all over his crotch at lunch.

AS spent too much of his lunch break subsequently dry-humping the cafe's bathroom baseboard heater.

AS perhaps enjoyed that last action a little too much.

AS perhaps shouldn't have admitted that.

AS needed the chuckle this blog post stirred. A lot. Cheers.

[BK]

A- Well done, and back at you. Laughing at your comment made me an extra minute or two late to play hockey. Also, I nearly wet myself.