friends and facebook

For .0001 percent of people who will actually read this post that don't know. I like 140 character microblogging. It's the medium where I'm most comfortable. Part art project, part industry, and sadly part personal brand building,  I use it as stream of consciousness thing. 

My audience for the microblogging comes from primarily two sources, Facebook and Twitter. There's some overlap but not much, the Facebook group is much larger. I post through twitter and it's ported to facebook as my status. My followers on Twitter tend to be "in the industry"-- digital agency people and smarty pants social media types. 

On facebook it's a different story. To start, all of my "friends" are people I've physically known at some point in my life, from the girl in second grade to that guy from the party on Friday. I currently have just under 500 friends. It's like a depot where friends from every year of my life have shown up at the same time. For the millennial teen I'm sure this doesn't seem very odd. But, for those of us with a few years, the idea of your kindergarten crush squaring off with some feminist art fascist you knew in the 80's over a comment from a former .com client is just plain mind warpingly odd.

There is a curious effect I'm noticing all of the layers of friends has on the microblogging, it makes me shy from exageration. I think of them as an enormous vetting layer. There's no room for embellishment when you can be seen and are known from every angle. Old stories, work stories, family stories, nothing can be embellihed-up braggart style or re-routed to serve the narrative. Someone will call you on it.

Thinking about the layers of friends in facebook eventually got me on the construct often employed to depict the afterlife, notions of the greatest bands ever assembled, and meeting relatives and historical figures long since deceased. Facebook is begining to feel like that only with a slight twist;  the working metaphor is "purgatory of the living"

Comments

[Ruth Kaufman]

I think of facebook as a persistent "Here is Your Life" episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f-rlvnlkA8

With every new friend, I picture Guy Smiley calling out that person's name, and, you know, they tell their anecdote, and the audience applauds :-).

[babecka]

aren't you a "smarty pants social media type"? or a wanna be???

[Alan Wolk]

>>the idea of your kindergarden crush sqauring off with some feminist art facist you knew in the 80's over a comment from a former .com client is just plain mind warpingly odd.>>

Yes. Fortunately, my real world FB friends tend to regard the SM stuff as "that weird thing Alan does" stuffed in with a lifetime of oddball interests, and so they don't comment.

Yet.

But you're right- it does keep me honest.