Facebook Has Ruined The Art Of Getting To Know Someone
“Does he have a Facebook?”
This was the first thing my roommate asked me when I told her about a coworker at my internship who had complemented me on how I did my hair that day.
“I don’t know, probably. I’m trying not to look.”
“Why would you do that? I’ll look him up. How do you spell his last name?”
I’m not necessarily against Facebook, I currently have one and it’s unlikely that I’ll delete anytime soon. However, I have come to realize that Facebook has ruined the art of getting to know someone.
Although I’m not trying to date the guy from work (but definitely wouldn’t reject him if he asked me out on a date) I’m still resisting the urge to Facebook stalk him. Even when my roommate said:
“Is that his girlfriend or his sister?”
The thing is, Facebook is really convenient. I can look someone up and find out where they work, if they have siblings, their relationship status, the last trip they went on, the movies, books, and music they like, and what they do on the weekends. It’s a pretty scary thing how much a person can find out about you.
I’m twenty years old and I’m nostalgic for an age I’ve never known. The age where you could not find out about someone’s life without asking them about it face to face.
Chuck Palanuick got the idea to write his first novel, “Fight Club” when he got into a fight when he was camping with his friends and he went back to work with a black eye his coworkers asked him about his weekend, but never addressed the fact he had a black eye. He realized that people didn’t ask him because it would be a person question that would involve something deeper than skidding about surface level relationships.
Now, in 2014 society is still the same way, but with an added twist. We don’t want to know someone on a deeper level in a face to face way, but we want to know if they are doing better or worse than we are.
I’m so guilty of this, and that’s why I really want to get to know the basics of my coworker’s life before I add him as a friend.
“Woah, his pictures of Israel are incredible!”
No matter how tempting it is to do the opposite.