Why not Facebook?

[Believe me, please, when I say: 1) I don’t know why I’m posting this one here; 2) I don’t mean to offend other people; and 3) this is 80% personal–which brings us back to #1.]

(And that’s a disclaimer.)

A blank stare, a questioning look, a you’re-ridiculous glare, and a blatant voiced-out ‘Why?’

These are what I get from people asking me if they can find me on Facebook and getting a ‘No’ for an answer. And I must admit that it is a reply very rare amongst my age. If I am a 30-year-old mother of three, maybe that’s forgivable. Or if I am a work-round-the-clock family provider. Or, which could be a better situation than any other, if I live in a cave.

 

Yeah, that's what they ask. (Photo from scrapetv.com)

But no, someone who doesn’t even go anywhere outside her front door most days must have all the time for updating a Facebook status. I won’t deny, yes I have that luxury. So why not be a Facebook user?

To tell you the truth, I do not have a straight one-rationale answer for that. It’s always a complex-woven range of reasons. And ones that have changed as time passes by and my life takes altering turns.

SILENCE

The first time I ever heard of the social networking queen (or king), I was watching my officemate log into her Facebook account. I was then an intern in a post-production company. Puzzled, I watched on as she prowled her online corridors and poked her head into her friends’ online rooms.

Then I concluded Facebook was just like Friendster made more complicated. I had one, a Friendster account, before through a secret mission my high school friends launched against me. They created it and I edited and used it a bit just to save myself from their further interference. But I lost interest, needless to say. Add in the fact that before, we didn’t have access to the Net at home and going out to Internet shops was a tiring, avoid-if-you-can thing. So now, the entire account had long since died until I had it officially buried.

I did not create a Facebook account because of that–I thought it was and would be as useless as my Friendster. It was just the same drill: log in, status (or shout-out), check on friends’ pages, try some apps, log out. How different could it be that I would find more enthusiasm for it than I did for the previous one? The answer: nothing much.

Hence, a still non-Facebook user I was when I entered my senior year in college. And the mayhem happened. Suddenly, everyone had Facebook accounts. They were affronting Friendster and even Multiply because, well, they thought Facebook was really way cooler. People had started asking me to create one, too. A page where they could somehow ‘see’ me and know more about me and talk to me through when we’re not in school.

I envisioned myself doing that, frankly. But I didn’t like what I saw: debating against myself on whether to accept a friend invitation or not, beating my online friends into seeing I’m online because I don’t wanna talk to them, rummaging around my brain for a status declaration that would somehow appear like a case of life-and-death.

No, I didn’t and still don’t like those scenes. I wanted my silence, my private life. If my friends would really want to talk to me, they would go even beyond the comfort of logging in to their Facebook accounts. Yes, I was that mighty-thinking. But reasonable, wasn’t I?

ANTI-GOSSIP

As time passed, I saw Facebook evolve through my friends’ conversations about it. They started picking gossips from the pages of not-so-friends, talking about what one’s status meant and how someone else’s seemed to contradict.

Don’t get me wrong, I do not 100% abhor gossiping. It’s a valuable part of human interaction. But probably, something about the idea of getting the gossip from as detached a place as Facebook puts me off. And maybe I think I don’t think I am as much of a gossiper as I’m letting on.

I do understand that Facebook has uses more than that one. Like in college when our batch representative sent announcements via the social networking site. But always, the news found me wherever in the offline community I was.

PRIDE

But if there was just one reason that had strengthened my resolution to keep well away from Facebook, it was my pride. On being the only one among my batch who never had a Facebook account (some of my batchmates had activated and deactivated theirs). On being the only one who did not have any other social networking accounts (I do have blogs–yes, in the plural–so I’m not totally offline). On claiming that news, FB-related or not, find me even if I don’t search for it.

If I want to hold my ground enough, that’s what I personally would anchor all my reasons on. But ultimately, I stand by what my college professor has taught us. That in the world of clicks and links, you only alert people of your presence if you can stay. And stay interesting enough, I guess.

In the end, I would forever remember what I’ve read in one issue of the Sunday’s Inquirer Magazine (that which comes free with the Sunday Inquirer), I want to ‘sign out and get a life‘.