But first, a quick Ocean City update! We are officially two weeks away from arriving in OC. We leave the morning of the 5th and will hopefully arrive by the 6th. Three hundred and thirty-six hours from now, I will be squishing sand between my toes on the Jersey shore. Time is flying by!
Anyway! Segue.
I have a brief history to share. Roughly fifteen months ago, give or take awful memory, I deactivated my Facebook for a number of reasons. Most of these reasons were time. I wound up with too many friends that weren't close friends and they would all show up on my News Feed and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of this gamut of uninteresting news and I would compulsively read every update on the Most Recent list because if it's there, I will read it. So this mess of information I didn't care about began to absorb my time.
Also, I started to put a lot of value in how well I was presenting myself on Facebook -- how many pictures I had, if I looked like a dork in those pictures, whether people were commenting on and liking my stuff, if I was chatting with cool cats.
Plus I was pretty deep into the stalking scene and it got to the point where I would have to consciously force myself not to bring up certain bands with certain girls to start conversations. I started to feel a little weird for good reasons.
So I finally summoned up my tiny paw of willpower and deactivated Facebook, swearing to never return ever.
Unless I wanted to.
My encouraging friends gave me a scope of estimates for how long I would last, the longest being somewhere in the one month range and most clustered around a week. More out of pride than wisdom, I resolved to prove them all wrong and stubbornly stayed off as the weeks stretched into months and inside jokes popped around out of my sight.
Eventually, like a detoxing crack addict, the craving subsided and I started to come to terms with my Facebook-less existence. I told myself it made me appreciate real life interactions more.
And I definitely had more time that I could put into better pursuits like YouTube, Stumbleupon and Starcraft II.
And as time passed I started to care less and less about the flurry of status updates I was missing. As long as I couldn't see it, I didn't care what went on in the digital world. It seemed trivial and I felt above it all.
But secretly, somewhere inside part of me really wanted to post a status about a funny thought I had or like a picture in someone's album. Just one little like. Any album.
At some point last year my friends concocted a fictional character named David Murphy (after a confusing situation where a real person was incorrectly identified as David Murphy and the name spread) and talked him up like a real guy, a freshman engineer. We had the brain blast to make a Facebook account for David Murphy to further the confusion.
As part of the creating committee, I made sure to obtain the password to this doppelganger account, secretly planning to use David Murphy, who would be friending all of our Northwestern friends, as my conduit to the trivial updates I was missing. It was a perfect plan, but let it be known that in total I used the fictional Mr. Murphy like 15 times during his existence. This wasn't like an addiction or anything.
Ahem.
This history is coming to a close. A few weeks ago when I was finally settled on going to Ocean City, I wanted to get my Facebook account back to join the Ocean City group and see who all would be going on the trip. My ever-wise and levelheaded roommate (jokes!) convinced me that I could see what was going on through his account if necessary and that there wasn't much to see anyway. I restrained myself.
Then I started updating this blog again and I wanted to advertise to a wider audience than Twitter. I held back again, but another point in Facebook's favor.
Finally, the breaking point came last Monday. We had elections for the Biology Students Association and I became the publicity chair. I was thinking posters and chalk and Twitter, but it quickly became clear that our biggest tool would be Facebook. Everyone is on Facebook. How are you supposed to get your name out without cheesy, derivative contests?
Just kidding. Facebook reach is a lot broader than that and a lot more important than I gave it credit for. I considered my alternatives -- use someone else's account to run the page, create a new account with no friends just for admin purposes... But the combined weight of my previous reasons won out and I crumbled like week-old coffee cake.
I got my Facebook back last Monday.
Anyway, it's been cool so far. I got to friend all the people I've met in the last 15 months, start catching up with people I don't get to talk to much because of distance, advertise this blog post, post statuses about my dumb thoughts..
And like some pictures.
Anyway! Segue.
I have a brief history to share. Roughly fifteen months ago, give or take awful memory, I deactivated my Facebook for a number of reasons. Most of these reasons were time. I wound up with too many friends that weren't close friends and they would all show up on my News Feed and I couldn't figure out how to get rid of this gamut of uninteresting news and I would compulsively read every update on the Most Recent list because if it's there, I will read it. So this mess of information I didn't care about began to absorb my time.
Also, I started to put a lot of value in how well I was presenting myself on Facebook -- how many pictures I had, if I looked like a dork in those pictures, whether people were commenting on and liking my stuff, if I was chatting with cool cats.
Plus I was pretty deep into the stalking scene and it got to the point where I would have to consciously force myself not to bring up certain bands with certain girls to start conversations. I started to feel a little weird for good reasons.
So I finally summoned up my tiny paw of willpower and deactivated Facebook, swearing to never return ever.
Unless I wanted to.
My encouraging friends gave me a scope of estimates for how long I would last, the longest being somewhere in the one month range and most clustered around a week. More out of pride than wisdom, I resolved to prove them all wrong and stubbornly stayed off as the weeks stretched into months and inside jokes popped around out of my sight.
Eventually, like a detoxing crack addict, the craving subsided and I started to come to terms with my Facebook-less existence. I told myself it made me appreciate real life interactions more.
And as time passed I started to care less and less about the flurry of status updates I was missing. As long as I couldn't see it, I didn't care what went on in the digital world. It seemed trivial and I felt above it all.
But secretly, somewhere inside part of me really wanted to post a status about a funny thought I had or like a picture in someone's album. Just one little like. Any album.
At some point last year my friends concocted a fictional character named David Murphy (after a confusing situation where a real person was incorrectly identified as David Murphy and the name spread) and talked him up like a real guy, a freshman engineer. We had the brain blast to make a Facebook account for David Murphy to further the confusion.
As part of the creating committee, I made sure to obtain the password to this doppelganger account, secretly planning to use David Murphy, who would be friending all of our Northwestern friends, as my conduit to the trivial updates I was missing. It was a perfect plan, but let it be known that in total I used the fictional Mr. Murphy like 15 times during his existence. This wasn't like an addiction or anything.
Ahem.
This history is coming to a close. A few weeks ago when I was finally settled on going to Ocean City, I wanted to get my Facebook account back to join the Ocean City group and see who all would be going on the trip. My ever-wise and levelheaded roommate (jokes!) convinced me that I could see what was going on through his account if necessary and that there wasn't much to see anyway. I restrained myself.
Then I started updating this blog again and I wanted to advertise to a wider audience than Twitter. I held back again, but another point in Facebook's favor.
Finally, the breaking point came last Monday. We had elections for the Biology Students Association and I became the publicity chair. I was thinking posters and chalk and Twitter, but it quickly became clear that our biggest tool would be Facebook. Everyone is on Facebook. How are you supposed to get your name out without cheesy, derivative contests?
Just kidding. Facebook reach is a lot broader than that and a lot more important than I gave it credit for. I considered my alternatives -- use someone else's account to run the page, create a new account with no friends just for admin purposes... But the combined weight of my previous reasons won out and I crumbled like week-old coffee cake.
I got my Facebook back last Monday.
Anyway, it's been cool so far. I got to friend all the people I've met in the last 15 months, start catching up with people I don't get to talk to much because of distance, advertise this blog post, post statuses about my dumb thoughts..
And like some pictures.
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