My Aunt wrote a message on my wall on Facebook. It said she had heard about my ear infection and hoped there was someone in Austin to take care of me while I am sick.
Considerate enough - and innocuous. I deleted it immediately.
My reaction to my Aunt's perfectly reasonable and totally banal posting on my page taught me something about Facebook: yes, it's personal and yes, it's marketing.
The posting she had replied to was one about pouring poison into the ear. Although I did not realize it at the time, it was a way of being intensely personal whilst also showing off my knowledge of literary references. The latter being more of the point than the former. In fact, the personal front-loading of the message served more to point out that even when I am ill, I am still clever.
That is, I believe, the function of Facebook. My Aunt's reply was completely inappropriate, unless it had been a private message. I was not wrong to remove it - I was wrong to treat the medium as though it could be navigated by people who didn't grow up with the idea of using every aspect of your life to consciously create a persona. My friends all get it and can read postings on two levels - in that case, 1.) Stephanie is sick and 2.) Stephanie is still looking for a job. (if you count my writer friends - there is a third level 3.) Stephanie is still one of us.
Any response to the first level alone is worse than useless, it is distracting, potentially a liability - it breaks the seamlessness of the interface and draws attention to the wrong side of the discourse.
I know she did not do it intentionally, I look at her own page and it is painfully boring, completely concerned with how cute her grandkids are, what she did with them today, how happy she is - it is, in short, a family Chirstmas letter except that it runs year-round.
This is my first real brush with the awareness that it is possible to master the technology and still not get it. Now I have to ask myself, do I get it?
I know my Facebook status updates should be funny or interesting or informative in some way. I know better than to do what some of my friends do and post things that are secretive or cryptic. It's tempting to write about the personal details forgetting why and how they must relate to anyone who reads it.
Which, of course, leads me to this blog. It cannot be an online archive, even if it isn't getting read. It's nice to have somewhere to put random new writing and ramblings on various issues but it isn't enough.
Some conversations really should be private.
Time to reassess. More later.
random thoughts on the passage through an ordinary life.
About Me
- Stephanie Farrington
- I figure if there's an average person, it's probably me. That is to say, I have lived in a few places, probably about average, I have a post-secondary education and an unfinished MFA - which is probably average for people who pursue and education, I'm hitting middle age, my job has been downsized and resized so many times it's safe to say I've never had any job security. I live an average life on the precarious edge of the middle class. I'm happily married to an American, I hold Canadian citizenship, for now. But I'm so disgusted with just about everything going on in Canada that I may pursue changing my citizenship to match my husband's. I am fiercely loyal to American ideals, in part because they make sense and in part because I am descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The idea of an equitable democracy, a meritocracy - that appeals to me. I write, I read, talk, take pictures and worry - just like everybody else. The hopes I hold most dear are for the health and well being of my immediate family, myself included, and the continuance of my happy life with my wonderful husband. Everything else seems manageable.
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