Against My Better Judgment

Well, today I sold my soul to the technological evil of virtual relationships otherwise known as social networking. As I begrudgingly signed up for a facebook account today, I felt a little something inside of me die. Sure, by finally giving into peer pressure and joining the rest of my generation on facebook, I probably haven’t received the “mark of the beast,” although I bet there’s some TBN preacher making that eschatological interpretation. But I do have serious hesitations:

1.Our culture is increasingly becoming virtual. People are replacing real, personal, physically-present relationships for an e-reality. It takes time and energy to make real friendships, but with a few clicks of a mouse I already have dozens of facebook “friends.”

2. Facebook feeds on our celebrity-driven narcissistic culture. Now, I’ve already admitted that this blog is semi-narcissistic and self-indulgent, but my primary reasons for having it are to give me an avenue to update friends and family on Jovi’s life and to occasionally write my thoughts on culture and theology. I’m not concerned with how many people read it, and I’m not attempting to gain friends or influence through it. Facebook seems to me to be a world in which everyone gets to be the star of their own little virtual world. Of course, not everybody uses it for this, but it does seem to promote this mentality.

The one and only reason I have joined facebook is to be able to communicate with a few people who seem to only use facebook as their means of communication. There is specifically one organization that I am trying to stay in contact with, and I’m realizing that it’s very difficult without facebook. So, there is my justification for going over to the dark-side.