Feeding Your Facebook

Ah, Facebook, where would we be without you? How else would we waste away our days digesting unnecessary and superfluous information about the lives of our friends and acquaintances? I’d especially like to thank all of you selfless posters who help keep me posted about what you had for dinner. Really, it’s fascinating. Here’s a novel idea; use the time you spend dissecting the evening’s meal actually talking to someone.

Facebook is insidious because it gives us the illusion that we are keeping in touch with our friends; actually we’re standing outside their bedroom windows, peering in. The fact that they purposely pulled the curtains back for us is irrelevant.

Facebook is the modern equivalent of drunk dialing. But before you make that next post to the old flame you’ve been pining for, stop. Think a minute. There’s a reason your ex is your ex. If she was so crazy about getting back in touch she would have done it. A long time ago.

Of course it is kind of a kick to hear from old friends. But for everybody that gives you a charge when you get their email, there’s the one that makes you cringe when you read the name. There he is, that kid you couldn’t stand back in high school, leering out at from the past and demanding to be brought up to speed on the events of your life. Sure, you can just ignore the request but I have an issue there. Does ignoring a friend request make anyone else feel guilty? Like you’re shutting the door in someone’s face? I have a problem with that, can’t help it. And this from a guy who has no problem telling almost anyone to fuck off as long as it’s live and in person.

I get the most fun out of Facebook when I play the memory game. You connect with someone you haven’t heard from in years and then ask them what they recall about some event that you thought was significant. It’s amazing how differently other people remember things. Or sometimes, it’s disconcerting to find that a moment that has plagued you for the last twenty years didn’t even register on your friend’s conscience, as if it never happened at all.

Memory is an elusive companion. Memory is the reason that stories exist; what is a story but a retelling of a memory? We all remember – and we strive to remember things correctly, or long to have someone tell those moments in a way that recaptures their essence. That’s when a story is great – when it rings true to some inner or collective memory that we all share, when it hits a chord that makes us say, That’s it, that’s how it was; even when the memory is not our own. One of the best closing sentences in all of modern literature is Fitzgerald’s – “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The more we struggle forward, the stronger the currents of memory, of things lost and time passed, surge against our progress.

It’s hilarious when the kids who work for me at Sheffield’s start pulling the nostalgia card. They get all dewy eyed about the good old days; like when they were ten. But then again my nine year old nephew talks wistfully about summers when he was a baby. I guess it’s all relative.

It’s often said that those who don’t remember the past are doomed to repeat it. As a writer, I don’t just remember the past – I mine it for ideas, for patterns, for ways to tell a good story. We’ve all got stories to tell; what separates the good ones from the monotonous are the ability to parse out the significant details and arrange them in a way that makes the reader want to know what happens next. I remember a day when three friends and I were sitting around a bar in Tampa, Florida and at one o’clock in the morning it somehow became a good idea to head down to Miami with a bottle of Three Fingers Tequila between my knees and a couple ounces of substantial weed on the seat in back. It’s a good story, but some of those memories have served to prevent an encore.

So the next time you’re eating the heart out of a perfectly fine afternoon, telling the world about your laundry and all the other things you should be doing, reach out to an old Facebook friend and throw them a memory. Then ask what they remember best about it. I bet you’ll find a surprise or two in what they have to say. And if you’re a writer, use that experience to try to see things through another person’s eyes, to understand why they remember that event differently. It’s time on Facebook that’s at least sort of productive. It’s not the same as actually accomplishing something, but it’s more interesting than writing about last night’s dinner.

— Ric Hess, Jun 12, 02:47 PM

Comment