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.