Socially Inept: The Reality Of Facebook

To join or not to join, that is the question. Whether to join that cacophony of random useless factoids, or confirm in truth that no one really cares what you think.

For me, to join wasn't a choice. My wife, who finds such sites to be entertaining, signed me up under her email. Sure, it was neat at first to have people I barely remember from high school suddenly ask to be my friend. But then it happened, as I'm sure it happens to all closet extroverts who join, hoping that someone will notice them. That moment when no one and I mean no one responds to your post. It's like waiting for that girl or guy to call you, but they never do. Your Facebook page continuing to scroll on by with the exchange of others mocking your apparent lack of interestingness...

You seethe with anger as you read that stream of life passing you by, and look at what's being written. There's nothing unique, there's nothing profound about what these people are writing, but they are getting responses while your post floats on down that river of text out to the infinium of the sea, and the cold hard reality of it hits you:

No One Likes You. If no one likes you, then there will be no one who finds what you have to say interesting. You've successfully found another social circle you can't be apart of, but with the added benefit of it being global, for all to see.

This was my dilemma as I saw the rather innocuous postings of my wife come up teeming with responses while mine floated on by. No one really cared to know what I thought, or what I was doing on vacation. For all my wife's claims of being unpopular in high school, I had visual proof of who was more so.

My time on Facebook ended as it began, with my wife. I was about to post about having the ultimate bonding experience with a spouse outside of coitus: getting a pedicure together when my wife looked over my shoulder and ranted, "That's too long. I hate it when people go on about stuff."

I looked at it. It didn't seem too long, in fact I was looking at another post right below where I was about to join the stream, and it was just as long. People had commented on it... And In truth, it was just as long as the post my wife had done. Then it hit me.

Too Long, too short, or just right, no one's gonna care that you got a pedicure with your wife anyway. And that was the reality of Facebook for me. What started off as something I didn't want to do, but had turned into something I was trying in an effort to become closer to my wife's world had come back full circle. The final realization in that being myself, no one cared. I was just as unhip and unpopular as I had been in high school.

I found my way to the deactivate account button. Facebook, acting like that one person who pleads with you, “Come on… don’t go… don’t be like that… there are people here who still want to know you…”, eventually relented after I convinced it that being ignored in cyberspace is just as bad as being ignored in reality. Somewhat mournfully, I disconnected from that world and re-entered the world where I'm accepted: mine. The world where I can be myself, type as long as I damn well feel like it without breaking the precious etiquette of the socially accepted. Back to the world that always accepted me for me. It’s a lonely world, but it’s one that’s always been there for me.

My wife wondered a couple weeks ago why a friend of hers wouldn't want to be stay on Facebook? My question to my wife would be: Why would anybody want to be anywhere where they didn't feel accepted and not a part of? Where visually they can watch people they know have lives without them, and worse, when they do try to contribute, nothing happens, no one responds. For people who found it hard to be socially accepted in life to join Facebook, it's like having a mirror held up to you, but this time, it isn't the physical appearance driving people away:

It's just you...