Staring At Facebook All Day
By Ray Straight
Have a full-time job. The routine of being awake by 9:00 is a crucial first step on this path to obsessive time delineation. No one with the day off ever wastes their day staring at a computer – well, no one as cool you you. You must be good at your job. This doesn’t mean being prideful and snobby about it, just efficient. The kind of job that you’ve been doing for a while. You may claim that your punctual email responses and generous attention to deadlines are simply to save everyone else time, but the truth is that you’re trying to make a few extra minutes to post to Twitter.
Next, spend the first half of your Monday seeing what everyone did over the weekend. Make a few clever comments and strategically placed “likes” in hopes of some thanks for your attention. Send a message or two to friends you haven’t seen in a while. Post a funny YouTube video to the page of the girl you have a crush on, sure that she’ll have something funny to say. Shortly after posting it feel unsure whether she’ll see this as trying to rush things after the one date you had. Wonder whether you should’ve included your own witty commentary when you made the posting. Don’t even consider adding a post an hour later, it’ll be too obvious you couldn’t think of anything sooner. Your paranoia over the whole situation is going to bleed through like the bad grammar of your old high school friends’ posts proclaiming loudly to the world “HEY! I DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE THE INTERNET!” Have a moment of uncertainty over whether you may have made a typo somewhere in your ‘About me’ section. Reevaluate your ‘favorite movies’ section. Quickly go through all of your tagged pictures making sure none of them are embarrassing. Un-tag the one where you’re standing next to your ex-girlfriend.
Go back and forth from checking your Gmail, Twitter feed and Facebook. That girl isn’t posting to Twitter. Maybe she just isn’t looking at the internet today. Maybe her job isn’t providing her the opportunities to idly browse the web that yours does. Quickly tab over to Gmail when you see an email. It’s only the Threadless newsletter. Start working on the Sunday crossword that you never got to yesterday. Whenever you get stuck on a word refresh your Facebook home page. Put some ice cubes into your coffee and eat some M+M’s out of your client’s candy bowl.
Quietly start listening to music and think about what songs you’d like to put on a mix CD for the girl you went on a date with. Decide to use one of your newer tagged pictures as your new profile picture. Wait anxiously for someone to “like” it. At least someone who was on that bike ride has to “like” it! Tab back to Gmail when you see that you got an email. Your band mates are confirming practice tomorrow. Geez! You know about practice already! There are more important things happening on the internet! Switch back to the crossword. Think of a six-letter word for “not translucent”.
Practically have a heart attack when both your Gmail and Facebook tabs in Google Chrome display the tiny “(1)” that denotes something extremely important has happened. See that someone else has commented on something you commented on earlier that morning. Stare blankly at the screen when you don’t recognize the person. Shake your head at their addition to the conversation which could hardly be called a comment. They should have just clicked the “like” button if that was all they had to say. And seriously, they didn’t even mention your hilarious comment! Well, it was sort of an in-joke between you and the person who started the thread. Click the Gmail tab so you can delete the notification email.
At 5:25, after your clients have left, go to the gym. Return home and take a shower. Have dinner with your friend. Watch an episode of “Six Feet Under” before falling asleep.
Wake up at 8:00 and see four new email notifications on your phone. Someone’s been checking you out on okcupid. Half off an hour long massage on Living Social. Your DTE Energy bill is ready to view and print. You have a new Facebook message.