BRITTICISMS

“We’re all characters in search of an audience. Without one, our experiences seem not to matter, or even not to have happened - which may be why we spend most of our time at important events texting and taking photos. In updating our Facebook profiles, we pretend to be satisfying an audience eager for news. […] This may be why my most eccentric friends abstain from Facebook altogether. What they fear is not exposure buy anonymity - the way Facebook obliterates distinctions between people, reducing their passions to hobbies and turning their happiness into the beaches and monuments, parties and pets common to us all. They’re afraid to be just another face in the wall.”

18 notes 2 years ago Johnny Thakkar in “The Withering of Narcissus: Playing Tyrant on the Internet” for The Point

I think that is one of the things that constantly bothered me concerning people not joining Facebook. I was conscious of the fact that using Facebook made me like everyone else and made my photographs or interests, however important they seemed in my life, nearly indistinguishable from my friends and acquaintances photographs or interests.

Being conscious of this, though, made me go back and forth between admiring the person and ridiculing them. In a sense, I admired their ability to not conform to the norm for my generation. They were able to exist without a technology that I found to be essential to my everyday life. I ridiculed them though because I also understood another facet of their mindset. They really craved their individuality, their ability to stand out, and to join Facebook would make that cultivated individuality seem pretty standard. Facebook was like a threat to their identity.
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