This morning it was snowing. This was determined when I looked out the window and saw snow. I told my roommate it was snowing. I then had to walk to class in said snow, thus experiencing the snow I had just observed.
I did get on facebook before leaving my dorm, and I saw what was to be expected: literally every other “friend” i have on facebook up here had a status relating to the snow in some way. Examples include “What a better way to bring in my favorite month of the year than with snow :)” (stunning grammar, I know), “SNOW!!!… Too bad we don’t get out of classes :/”, and, simply put, “Snow”. I’ve observed this phenomenon happen any time something major happens. ”Major” in this case means “it affects me.” It would seem floods in Pakistan, financial crises, and Wikileaks don’t really constitute “majorly important” to the majority of my facebook friends. Of course, this can easily be connected to the issue of facebook developing my generation’s already virulent narcissism (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1153583/Social-websites-harm-childrens-brains-Chilling-warning-parents-neuroscientist.html), but I think there’s a more harmful thing facebook does than turn kids into raging narcissists: it devalues experience.
I had no desire to contribute a facebook status stating what was readily obvious to anyone who had a little thing scientists call “the ability to see shit”, also commonly known as “vision.” In fact, you wouldn’t even have had to SEE the snow; you could be blind and FEEL it on your skin. Regardless, upon seeing the snow, the instinct was clear: post a status about it. Why did so many of my friends feel compelled to espouse to their circle of friends (many of whom, presumably, go to the same college) the weather Were any of the proclamations of the especially clever or interesting? No. Were they conveying any information that I couldn’t find on a weather site? No; in fact they were telling me noticeably LESS than a weather site. Furthermore, this environment is known for snow (I’m in the mountains), and this makes the snow update even LESS interesting or intriguing. I’m guessing it’s because many of my fellow students come from temperate climates where snow is an anomaly, and they have failed to get that into their schema of what weather should be.
Still, passing interest is not grounds for exposition. If I saw an interesting cloud, I would savor that experience, and maybe mention it to a friend. However, I wouldn’t put a sentence next to my name that talked about it. Why would I? This reveals the deeper problem with social media: it’s not enough to experience something; you MUST tell the entire network about your experience, REGARDLESS OF IT’S SIGNIFICANCE. I imagine they feel that what they experienced doesn’t really “count” if they don’t post a status or tweet about it. It has devalued you as an individual so much that your experience isn’t good enough if you haven’t told the social media network about it. Significance is no longer in the eye of the beholder, it is in the eyes of the masses. People are not content with simply experiencing something, regardless of it’s banality.
Now I’ll grant you, if you experience something sublime or amazing, you’re going to want to tell people about it! I’m not disputing this. But that should be reserved for events like a blizzard, not a snow dusting. Seriously, there’s not even an inch on the ground. This leads to the other problem. Much like the boy who cried wolf, if you post about every damn thing you experience, the interesting ones are going to get lost in the static. That’s why I try to only post things on my facebook that I find supremely interesting, or things that I don’t feel my friends will be exposed to if I don’t highlight it, or I just use it as a form of communication (passive communication, mostly). Once again, I’ve just tricked you into reading a multi-paragraph post about how right I am about everything, and how everyone else is wrong about stuff. Cheers! Oh, and religion makes you a racist! Ch-ch-ch-check it out! http://socyberty.com/education/study-confirms-religion-makes-you-racist/
EDIT: As of December 4th, 2010, this exact same thing happened again. Facebook has been assaulted by yet another round of snow-related statuses.
Originally posted to Tumblr on December 1, 2010
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