Okay, so here is the deal.  I am sure that by now, a plethora of more intelligent, credible, and educated individuals have addressed the issue of Facebook.  In fact, I have read some of them.  They are credible and intelligent, and very interesting.  Facebook is taking over our brains, Facebook is a social phenomenon, Facebook is reaching for world domination.  Facebook is, in a word, weird.  But I cannot help adding my two cents, as a recent FB-joiner and relative newcomer to the legitimate social powerhouse of Facebook.  

As for credibility, I would argue that I am part of a very credible demographic when it comes to social networking: twenty-year-old college students.  Facebook is rampant among twenty-year-old college students, from what I’ve seen.  Female and male, bio majors and performance art kids, cigarette smokers and non, folks who want to party and folks who want to spend all night in the library.  Both the partiers and the studiers will inevitably check their Facebooks, by phone or by laptop or by library computer.  It is compulsive.  Facebook never sleeps, and while you sleep, your friends might be posting interesting things that you could totally make intelligent commentary about.  

Admitting you don’t have a Facebook is akin to not having a high school diploma.  The exchange usually goes something like this:

Casual Friend: Oh, but didn’t you get the FB invitation to Person #7’s surprise party?

You: Uh, well actually, I don’t have a Facebook?

Casual Friend: [eying you with part suspicion, part bafflement] …..Why not?  

You: Oh, I don’t know.  It seems silly and time-consuming to me.  I would be afraid I’d just ignore it for long periods and accidentally offend people.

Casual Friend: Man, I thought everyone had Facebooks!  You must be one of the last people in the world to hold out!

The exchange ends here, with your casual friend probably gloating about how much fun Person #7’s party was, and you thinking defensively about all of the millions of people you know must not have Facebooks, including but not limited to:

-the extremely poor

-people too old to understand or desire new social networking opportunities

-small children

-very ill/mentally challenged individuals

-righteous-minded elitists who are against Facebook based on Principles

-people who are too lazy to make/maintain one

However, then you begin to ask yourself: which of these categories do I belong to?  I don’t have anything against Facebook on principle.  I have the means to create one, and friends who I’m sure would be thrilled to extend their relationship with me to the intrawebs.  Am I really too lazy to input my name and e-mail address into a website, post a picture of myself, and make a bunch of people really happy that they now can communicate with me in the most convenient possible way? 

Up until a few months ago, for me, the answer was yes.  I was not against Facebook on principle, really — I thought it was stupid, but only understood it on a basic level.  It scared me.  I didn’t want an online presence that held sway over my real day-to-day life.  I was lazy, and I felt certain that upon making a Facebook, I would promptly forget about it and unwittingly offend my online friends.  But when I went home for the summer, things changed minutely.  Sick of missing party after party, which my rude friends did not bother to text me about, assuming as always that EVERYONE got a FB invite, I created one.  

And, in ways that I could never have anticipated, my life has never been the same.  

I have already written that Facebook is “weird”.  This is such an inadequate word for what I wish to express.  Facebook is a towering, ever-expanding machine, powered by a truly staggering number of human beings.  Facebook allows us to keep in touch with each other anytime and anywhere.  It is a form of interaction previously undreamed of by both myself and, I’m sure, previous generations.  It is a wondrous, incomprehensibly organized, totally intangible form of human communication.  

Beyond all of this, it is extremely addictive.  I am sure there are Facebook users out there who do not check their page every day.  There must be.  I’m sure there are lazy Facebook users who actually DO ignore the site, and their online friends get offended.  In a Hitchcockian turn of events, I turned out to be the complete opposite.  I am addicted to Facebook.  I check it every time I turn on my computer, first and foremost.  I spend hours on Facebook chat, talking to people from high school whom, if spotted in real life, I would probably awkwardly pull my collar up and try to look harried so as to avoid a run-in.   I waste so much time on Facebook.  According to the site itself, there are more than 500 million users.  And of these 500 million, half log into their accounts on any given day.  

Facebook is a drug.  It is an opiate and a stimulant, something to turn to when you’re bored; something to procrastinate with when you have more important things to do; something to distract you when you want to get out of your own head.  And beyond this, it is a virus!  When you have a Facebook and your friend doesn’t, you really wish he did.  You will probably try to convince him to get one, so that you’ll have an easy, public place to show him stuff.  I used to scoff at my Facebook-usin’ friends, always scrolling up and down those befuddling banners, things appearing and disappearing in different corners.  But Facebook is disturbingly hard to pull away from, once you are securely within its grasp.  How will you know what your friends are doing? How will you know what kind of cool things they’re finding online, and how will they post them on your Wall?  Can you survive without a Wall?

That is the question I find myself asking more and more.  Can I survive without a Wall, on which at any given moment, a friend or acquaintance might post some link or greeting or picture of an overturned turtle?  That, and a relatively more disturbing question: What would I have been doing for the past three hours if I had not been refreshing my Home page on FB?  

Probably not writing an essay about how weird Facebook is.  At least some intellectual good has come out of my social networking obsession.  

Despite my love and respect for Stephen King, when I haven’t read him in awhile, I tend to underestimate his work.  This was exactly the case with ‘Salem’s Lot — King’s second novel, and one which I had studiously avoided since the early days of my King obsession. 

Why?  Vampires had never interested me.  Probably due to the fact that they did not even frighten me as a small girl.  It was an unpleasant concept, sure, but what was so scary about black-robed bloodsuckers, trawling the night for some busty maiden to bite?  I did not anticipate being scared shitless by ‘Salem’s Lot, or even scared at all.  I was dead wrong.

‘Salem’s Lot is a page-turner paced just slowly enough to draw readers along without ever giving them a full idea of the horrors simmering just below the surface, waiting to burst forth.  It is a tragedy in 600 pages, a study in slowly-fraying sanity, and the increasing desperation which comes when it seems the sun will never rise. 

Stephen King is a master of characterization, and this novel arguably displays him coming fully into his own in that respect.  He understands that for it to really pack a punch when some minor Jane or Judy bites the dust, we have to feel as though we knew the victim ourselves.  And so he introduces us to the residents of ‘Salem’s Lot, one at a time, allowing us to catch glimpses of their triumphs and their pain, and their small acts of evil.  Mid-book, a reader might’ve grown up in the town.  We sympathize completely with Ben Mears, haunted by his past but heartbreakingly optimistic for the future.  We fall a little bit in love with him when Susan Norton does, and we share her frustrationan and fury at her mother’s inability to understand her feelings.  We respect and admire Matt Burke’s casual solitude, his quiet dedication.  These characters come easily to us, almost as old friends.  We become first uncomfortable, then disconcerted, and eventually downright terrified as their fates become clear. 

Barlow, while not King’s scariest villain ever, certainly breaks the Top Ten list of creatures I would not want to meet in some deserted lot after sunset.  I found it interesting that he was not revealed as the main antagonist until very late in the book — we were watching Straker, and the growing legions of Undead townspeople.  We knew the unpictured Barlow was certainly playing some part in all of this, but never imagined (or at least, I never imagined) the full extent of his monstrous power. 

Toward the last quarter, the novel begins picking up speed, faster and faster until we are hurtling uncontrollably toward the white-hot, blood-spattered climax.  This is another of King’s great strengths: we are never sure what drastic twist is sneaking up on us, or when things are reaching the point of no return.  Things deteroriate at a deceptively slow pace, until suddenly the town is dead and the sole survivors are faced with an unimaginable task. 

I really liked ‘Salem’s Lot.  It is not as complex as some of his later novels, but it is a witty, dark, often quite scary foray into previously-unexplored territories of vampire ouevre.  It plants a certain seed of doubt in the reader’s mind: Could this happen here, where I live?  Could not the evil which sprung from both within and without the town of ‘Salem’s Lot comsume any other town?  I believe this is exactly the question King wants us to ask ourselves, and he would doubtless be thrilled to know that I will probably pull the covers up to my chin tonight. 

THE BOTTOM LINE: Fun, witty, highly readable for a 600+ page novel — but not for those with an aversion to blood!