Why I Hate Facebook Likes

Things have gotten out of control with Facebook Likes lately.

 

Back in the day, Likes were a way to let someone know you read and appreciated their post or thought their picture was funny without having to write out a comment which would notify all other commenters and get the poster excited only to find that your comment was “LOL”. Brilliant.

 

 

It was a way to say “hey this was funny or cool or remarkable and I connected with it in some way.” And most importantly, it wasn’t that common. Posts would circulate that only got like 2 Likes but they were still pretty good posts. And people would post profile pictures that didn’t get any Likes at all. Funny, creative profile pictures, but no Likes. Likes were exciting. Likes were flirty.

 

If you don’t believe me, go look through any of your friends’ profile pictures and get back into 2011 or earlier. This will work unless you picked a really popular friend. Pick like an average friend. Even remarkable pictures have like two or three Likes. What the heck. Were we all just unlovable?

 

Now flash back to the end of 2012. Scroll through your newsfeed. If you find a post with no Likes, the poster is probably either old or making an inside joke that hasn’t been noticed by the inner circle yet.

 

 

Or the post is 6 seconds old. Boom. Now it’s got a Like.

 

Everyone gets Likes. Even the things that don’t really deserve Likes get Likes. And this inflation has carried right on over so that an average post with a bit of thought had better clear 8 Likes. And if you posted a Bible verse and got less than 10 Likes, you must have accidentally mis-transcribed some blasphemy.

 

 

And on the upper end, remarkable posts and pictures will clear 40 or 50 on a regular basis. 50 Likes. That’s unheard of. And the really amazing posts and pictures can shoot up past 100 Likes. We’ve all seen it. Ridiculous. That’s like a standing ovation in a crowded room full of everyone you like.

 

Okay and here’s the thing. This Like inflation is just a fact. It just happens. There were probably two main causes:

1) People learned that if you Like other things, people will Like your things.

2) It became friendly and not weird to Like posts by people you don’t know that well. Instant harvesting territory expansion.

 

But while this inflation is just a fact, the unfortunate problem is that humans love statistics and numbers. News, Sports, Shopping, Weather, Academics. Numbers are easy to obtain and use.

 

And here’s the bottom line: Numbers are easy to compare.

 

And that’s where friendly back-scratching Likes turn into monsters. Even people who aren’t that competitive get to see their Likes and everyone else’s Likes and they notice these things. Everyone notices Likes. They get an encouraging red number asserting their value on the top bar of their screen.

 

 

And no matter how quietly it comes in, everyone hears that little voice that goes, “Man, everyone liked that picture of yours.” Or, “Geez. That guy has way more popular statuses than you.”

 

And maybe for some people it doesn’t matter that much. They shrug off the comparison. But for competitive people like me, it can be immobilizing. Why didn’t people like that comment? That was funny.

 

I don’t think there will be a critical point where we get bored of Likes and they tail off. We might plateau, but it’s going to be at more Likes/post than 0.7.

 

And I think that’s what really gets me -- that before an average status and a dumb status both got between 0 and 3 Likes. But now the average one gets 13 and the dumb one gets 2. You know when your joke wasn’t funny.

 

I don’t want that information. But I think I just need a thicker skin.

 

 

**

 

 

I have more to say because I’m traveling and when I travel I feel vulnerable and dramatic and profound. But the other things I want to say are all about me and sometimes you just want to read a blog post about Facebook Likes. If this is you, stop here. Or three sentences ago.

 

I’m on the Megabus and it’s my first time. I’m on the top level in the front row which means that I can pretend that I’m driving and also if I stretch my arms up it feels like I can just about touch overpasses, a thrill I should exhaust now because I’m headed to the land of rural flatness, Nebraska.

 

It’s hard to say good-bye properly and it’s hard to realize how much I’ll miss people even just for two and a half weeks while we’re still together. Then I get on the Metra and listen to The City Harmonic and realize that I like my friends a lot while the strings sound more profound than they ever do on Spotify in my room when I’m procrastinating writing a paper.

 

I want to write about a bunch of my friends’ likable characteristics that I’ve never mentioned to them but I feel like I would miss more than I remember.

 

I want to write about girls and flirting and how sometimes I think I just live for positive attention and how I’m tired of acting how I would hate for other people to act.. but I don’t want to be that vulnerable.

 

I want to write about how much I want to be disciplined but how by the end of every quarter I always end up sleeping in too late and eating less healthy and wasting time on the internet but I’m in too positive of a mood right now to dredge that cycle up. I might come back to that.

 

This last quarter was hands down the best quarter of college I’ve had to date. I feel like I came into college with big expectations that were decidedly not met right at first and even as I settled more into place I was self-conscious and stressed and struggling to find my groove. By spring quarter of last year I feel like I broke even and was finally living the socially connected college life I had expected. This year blew those expectations out of the water.

 

I have more friends now than I’ve ever had in my life. Incredible, loving, hilarious people. I don’t know what to do with this wealth.

 

I started taking pictures this quarter. I told myself I would take 2 a day, even if that meant that I forgot all day and ended up taking 2 pictures of Danny sleeping before going to bed. It worked great. I took over a thousand pictures this quarter, almost 800 of which made it onto Facebook. That’s over 250 pics a month. That’s information density.

 

I took these pictures so I could remember things (you might recall my nostalgic post on memories) and I think it’s worked great. I’m going to remember this quarter better than any other period of my life, as long as Facebook doesn’t crash and my harddrive doesn’t get wiped.

 

And it’s become sort of routine now. At first people got camera shy when I would pop out the camera at dinners but now all I have to do is shout “Mems!” and the group braces themselves for hideous candids to be posted later that night. And since I tote my rugged, battered Sony point-n-shoot in my pocket everywhere I go, I’ve gotten used to popping it out at almost every social event.

 

I don’t remember to take 2 pictures every day, or at every event. Lately I’ve settled into a less frequent routine that probably won’t continue to yield 250 pictures a month, but it’s consistent. Definitely the most successful habit I’ve developed this quarter.

 

That’s enough about mems.

 

I’ve been less stressed this quarter. Sorry that I’m using the word “I” a lot in this post. Usually I try to tell stories, but this is my post-quarter, post-blog-post-drought processing.

 

I used to worry a lot about tests and assignments and making sure I had things done on time. I have a little less work now because my classes are getting harder but giving less homework. But mostly I’ve learned to work on this week’s assignments without worrying about the paper in three weeks. It used to hang over me like a palpable cloud. It’s not as strong anymore. I don’t know how this came about.

 

This mindset broke down a bit over finals week. I got pretty stressed about my two finals, which I didn’t study enough for. But I never study enough for tests. In retrospect I don’t know why I was so stressed. Note to future Nolan: cool your jets during finals.

 

In general, stress has been way lower than ever before and I don’t know why but I hope it stays.

 

That’s enough about stress.

 

This quarter has been pretty spiritually dry. And it’s weird because that’s in the midst of this being the most fun and least stressful and the most generally successful quarter I’ve had. Does that suggest that spiritual discipline and fun are mutually exclusive? I hope not.

 

I haven’t read my Bible much. I don’t have time for it, between homework and music and uploading pictures to Facebook. I haven’t spent much quality time with God.

 

I don’t expect every episode of my life to be spiritually exceptional. But this quarter could have been a lot better and it’s definitely my fault. I get hung up on Jesus saying things like, “Live righteously if you want to enter the Kingdom.” And then I let my confusion be an excuse to avoid using time on God that I could be using to mix beats or stalk friends on Facebook.

 

I don’t want that to be my life, but I don’t know what my motivations are for desiring change. Do I want to be spiritually better so that I can live consistently with my beliefs or so that I can tell people I am spiritually better?

 

Why do I do the things I do? Or want the things I want?

 

That’s profound.

 

I want to know God better, but my priorities are in the way.

 

I’ll end on that note.

Memories are Stupid

It's been a while since the last post! First things first --

Cole had a tablet lying around and during my transition between Nebraska and Evanston, I borrowed it. This has two advantages over buying a new pen. First, it's borrowing and not buying, so for the moment it's free. Second, my computer's in its screen-flickering death throes and its successor won't be a touch screen so a separate tablet makes life a lot easier.

I'm in Wheaton right now, getting ready to go back to school tomorrow. Tomorrow! It's hard to believe. Mid-September sounded distant a month ago, but I guess it's here.

The last three weeks I was in Nebraska, doing construction work and trying to see as much family as possible in a brief time. I told myself I would work on recording songs and writing some fiction during my evening downtime but didn't do nearly as much as I wanted to. What's new.

After three weeks, though, I walked away more convinced than ever that if I don't wind up particularly equipped or passionate for ministry in any specific locale, I'm going to live in Nebraska.

I love the openness. I love looking in every direction and seeing horizon, speckled with the odd farmhouse or short treeline -- windbreaks. It's people existing in the middle of an unending plain. Or plane. The sky changes color at the horizon. You don't see it when buildings are in the way, but it's lighter and yellow at the bottom.

And as much as I instinctively feel that buildings obscuring 10% of a sunset should diminish its awe by 10%, that isn't the case. An open sunset is matchless. Sunsets or sunrises over the ocean are alright, but it's about drinking in fresh air, seeing sky meet land on every side and watching the texture of the endless cornfields blend together while the light fades.

Basically.

I love dirt roads, when it's rained and the tires slowly accelerate you beyond safety and the ruts in the road throw the car around but if you don't panic and oversteer, the ruts hold you on the road too. I love picking a dirt road and following it past civilization while night sets.

I love the stars beyond light pollution, when you have to take deep breaths because that's infinity and you can see the clouds of the Milky Way all in a line. And it's cold because nothing blocks the wind and there've been bobcat sightings but you still sit on top of the car and try to find constellations. The stars are so bright.

I would live in Nebraska. I miss the land and I miss the relatives there and I miss leaving the car unlocked parked on Main Street because no one steals anything.

Anyway, enough about Nebraska. This post is about memories.

I drove on a road south of town two weeks ago. The interstate is north of town so there's never any reason to go south unless you're going to the town 25 miles in that direction. I was, to visit some friends. And the summer before I had driven on that same road for the same purpose -- and during the year in between I had never touched that road because the turn to my grandparents' house comes just before it.

As soon as I started driving down that road, all the memories from that car ride last year swam back -- the dense fog, so that the lights from cars in the other direction lit up the air like daylight. My stop next to the irrigation company's building to sit in silence and try to feel God. It was as clear as if it had just happened a week ago.

That was the first time I experienced such a clear memory from a location, but I get glimpses like that pretty often from songs.

Me and Cole listened to Live Your Life by T.I. dozens of times on the last family vacation before he went to college and it still recalls snorkeling in bright blue water on perfect beaches.

On our way to church, our family would listen to Casting Crowns and The Altar and the Door puts me back in the light blue Sports Rider, driving past Carrefour week after week.

Anything by the O.C. Supertones reminds me of living in Dallas back in 2002 and playing street hockey on the neighbor kids' driveway.

And there's plenty of others. The new song The Proof of Your Love by for King & Country I can already tell is pretty tied to these three weeks in Nebraska because there was nothing else on the Christian radio stations.

But here's the part where things suck, and the reason memories are stupid. Every time I listen to one of these memory-bound songs and relive those experiences, the connection gets a bit weaker. And the song starts to get tied to the point in my life when I'm listening to the song, instead of the past memory it was associated with.

So now The Altar and the Door is as much about learning guitar as it is about driving to church, and Live Your Life is about sitting on my bed with headphones in.

They don't recall the experiences as vividly -- and sometimes, if I'm not paying attention, they don't bring back memories at all.

And that sucks because my memory is awful and having these songs was a neat trick to circumvent my inability to retain memories by power of will. Every time I enjoy a memory, it weakens it. That's stupid.

I started a word document a few months ago where I tried to write down all the memories I could remember. The deeper I tried to remember, the deeper the memories went. I filled four pages with a smattering from a couple very specific points in my life. I think it would take years to write down enough memories to feel even partly satisfied.

And I've tried taking pictures, but I'm not disciplined enough so what I wind up with is a couple random and unexciting pictures from big events. But I want to remember the little events too.

As I forget more and more (off the top, I can't remember more than a few main events even from two years ago, and it gets egregious past that), I feel like I'm losing part of what's made me me. I guess on some level I have to trust that my awareness of my development isn't integral for my development.

Anyway, that's why memories are stupid. Because they're hard to remember.

What Just Happened?

Except in rare, pensive moments, I can't believe Summer Project's over. The project's participants are scattered across America (mostly in California and the Midwest). I'm in Illinois, at Danny's house in Hinsdale.

We're not living in a ramshackle, jam-packed house with a hundred college students anymore. We're not spending our evenings on a crowded boardwalk trying to get bratty high school kids to talk about Jesus with us. I'm not working at Rite Aid (ever again).

Sometimes I feel like I get to my emotions late. I didn't cry when everyone left, in a series of scattered waves that got easier each time. It didn't seem real.

I mean, it seemed real that they were leaving. Cars kept driving off and friends kept crying for friends. But somehow the whole summer didn't seem real. I had formed some deep bonds with people, but I almost couldn't admit that to myself. It happened too fast -- as a friend put it, "You know peoples' deepest sin struggles but not their favorite color."

And I had learned so much about God and life and myself, but part of me wanted to say, "You just had a weird experience. Let's be real, you're the same person you were on June fifth, clambering into that silver Cavalier between stacks of suitcases."

Everyone stood on the sidewalk of the Ambassador's Inn bawling their eyes out at the loss of something indefinable that an intentional summer with a hundred intentional people had created, but I couldn't admit that we had ever had that in the first place.

It's only later, in little nuggets, that I get to see that indefinable something that I had been too busy experiencing to notice. Like telling home friends about project friends -- they never quite get it, but I wish I could pull them in and have them listen to Armani's laugh or see Peter in a rambling mood. If only they could have been there when we turned off all the lights and pretended to be zombies for hours on end.

And it's weird because the things I miss most aren't the things I expected to miss. And the people I miss most aren't the people I expected to miss. And I feel like even if I had back the people whose company I miss, it still wouldn't be the same indefinable project something. I don't just miss their selves -- I miss the way they told jokes in a group or sarcastically bantered with someone else, or the way their voice rose when they shared a story in front of the whole project after a night of outreach.

The more I realize how impossible it is to fully capture the essence of what project was, the more I feel an empty longing.

But at the same time, I wouldn't go back. Project was great and I learned a lot and spent tons of quality time with great people, but it was as stressful as it was fulfilling. Since I had so much work, I felt a constant pressure to use the free time I had well -- being intentional with relationships, evangelizing, having quiet times. And usually I felt like I wasn't efficient enough with my time and didn't achieve quite as much as I should have.

And it was also too surreal. Everyone was so interested in everyone else and so jazzed up about Jesus and just wanted to talk about Jesus-y things and prove that they cared about evangelism and get more into Christianity and read all those books and listen to all those sermons and things. It was crazy Christian.

The real world isn't like that and, more importantly, those same people in the real world aren't like that. They don't confess their sin so quickly at home, or build into other guys so much, or fight their pride so hard. It's sweet that that happened on project, but I'm ready to return to the real world and learn how to be a self-feeder when I'm not surrounded by guys obsessed with Jesus.

Project was awesome, but I can't wait to be back at Northwestern.

**

It's hard to think of all I learned when I reflect on project. I feel like I was a youth before project and now I'm an adolescent, but the specific lessons are hard to put a finger on. Here are, to my best recollection, my takeaways:

1) I suck in a lot of ways. I have crappy motivations for even the good stuff I do. I'm judgmental and mean and sarcastic. Even after a summer of growing, I couldn't even start to make a list of all the ways I come up short. I'm arrogant and usually think I'm right and I have a tough time thinking well of other people or being encouraging. If there's one thing I want to remember four months from now, it's how crappy I am.

2) Jesus died for my sarcastic insults and judgmentalism. God doesn't see me as an egocentric jerk, most of whose nice actions are motivated by self-interest. He sees me as perfect and humble and loving and kind. That's ridiculous.

3) Evangelism is as simple as it is necessary. All it takes is stomaching the awkwardness of the initial encounter and then being interested in what the person has to say. When I care more about Doing Evangelism than listening to the person, it gets weird. Evangelism isn't as hard as I make it out to be in my mind.

4) The majority of my sarcasm is unacceptable. I think it's all just jokes and laughs, but a lot of times it hurts more than I imagine.

5) I'm not a very encouraging person, but being intentional about noticing things to encourage in other people deepens relationships in a way that inside jokes and playful taunting never will. My lack of encouragement is not okay.

6) The quicker I confess my sin, the better I feel. And confession to Danny and God doesn't always count. If I'm harboring resentment toward someone, I need to confess it to that person. As much as that sucks.

7) I need alone time and I need time with God. If I short myself on the first, I get moody and irrational and I have trouble knowing what I'm thinking. If I short myself on the second, my life gets off track and it's difficult to remember my life goals -- I end up doing whatever feels best. But one commodity I need less than I thought is sleep. Turns out I can function alright for an extended time on six or fewer hours a night.

8) I could never work as a cashier for any length of time.

**

That was a life-changing summer. Definitely a one-of-a-kind experience. Thanks for your support, whether that was money or prayer or encouragement.

I'm excited for the year ahead.

New York City and Winding Down

Yesterday we went to New York City. It was a pretty hot and muggy day but worth it because it was the first time for a bunch of us. We took a ferry over from Staten Island to gaze at the Statue of Liberty and the skyline but there was a lot of fog and the statue was also much smaller than anticipated.

If you haven't seen it before or interacted with its reality, the statue is much less impressive than you think it is if you're the same person as me. It's not the size of a skyscraper. It's not that well proportioned. 70% of the statue is its base and the statue starts large and ends in a tiny head that doesn't look that intimidating.

I know the French spent a long time on it, but I just think they could have done better if they'd drawn up a sketch first or spent more time planning.

Anyway. After that anticlimactic intro, we hit up all the big scenes -- the Twin Towers Memorial, the Empire State Building, the New York Public Library, Grand Central Terminal (not Station, don't you dare), the Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Central Park, Chinatown, Times Square.

It was a blast.

By three in the afternoon we were ready to call it quits but we chugged some iced tea, rested in the toy store that the one in Home Alone 2 was based on, and pressed through until the 10:30 ferry granted our aching feet a reprieve.

All this to say, we had a pretty good trip.

And my boss has all but guaranteed that I will be putting in 40 hours for both of the next two weeks, right up until I leave. And given scheduling history, I'll probably be working on my birthday. And my day off this next week is going to be a cleaning day.

All this to say, New York City was the last little hurrah of my Ocean City experience.

And also to say that I'm still not over the fact that people are finishing their jobs now and I still have to work for two more weeks and they're going to be having fun times and every day all I can think about at work is, "Oh great, a bunch of hours of boredom and then tomorrow there's going to be more boredom." And there appears to be no chance for ministry or entertainment at work so I become bitter and resentful by like 8:30 AM.

All this to say, I've identified another heart issue to work on.

In other news, I'm also starting to gear up for not being at Ocean City anymore in a couple weeks and the weeks right after project seem incredibly scary because I know that when I come off of the high of being in such tight and constant community, I'm going to feel dead and apathetic and I'm going to waste the time that I could spend reading all those good Christian books that I'm not reading now.

But then the weeks after that when we hit campus again and can dig back into the community of friends that we've already gone deep with and can start doing ministry with the incoming freshmen seem like awesome weeks and so I would go so far as to say my feelings about the future are ambivalent.

That's not correct grammar.

I would go so far as to say I'm ambivalent about the future.

Good night.