Farewell Facebook

Friday, on the way to watch the worst team in baseball, our Seattle Mariners, I stopped off at the best place to shop for reasonably priced fashions, our North Bend Outlet Mall, and acquired a new pair of the best shoes for human feet, our Vans Authentics. The colour-way that I procured was black with black souls, a colour-way I had yet to own, but one that my good friend Cameron Grant had bought a full year earlier. So what is the first thing I decided to do? Put on my new shoes? Text or call Cam to tell him about the shoes I bought? Nope, I did the cutest thing I could think of at the time: Funny Facebook Status Update! BUT for some reason, 'suggestively morbid' was the funniest genre I could think of. It read something along the lines of:

"In honour of Cameron Grant, I just bought the Black on Black Vans Authentics. Rest in peace Cam. Cameron Grant (1984-2009). We miss you buddy."

For two hours, my status was broadcast to the roughly 270 people on my friends list. Sarah, Cam's wife and parents received calls by concerned and crying friends. Cam and Sara had to make numerous phone calls and text messages to clear up the mess I had caused. And as my guilt set in, I began to really boil down facebook and examine what it has done to my life. My guilt was genuine, but this ordeal revealed how people have made facebook their real lives (myself included). Rather than just asking me something like, "are you kidding Devin?" people, in tears, called Sarah. I'm sure that my closer friends and family knew in an instant that I was joking.

In the case of those who didn't, I realize that people know too much about me to know nothing about me at all. My influence has grown too wide for a 26 year old who knows essentially nothing about life. I think about my 270 or so facebook 'friends' and now realize that I've been trying to get to know these people by reading statuses, looking at vacation pictures, and reading profiles, all of which are only what we choose to project on facebook and not our real selves. I've even been neglecting my closest friends abroad; I haven't called Matt King, the Grants, Jake, in forever, because I can just read their wall and know what's up. Rather than calling my own family, I stay up to date via their facebook pages (I think they do the same to me). And it all breaks my heart. Facebook promises to be this social network that brings people together and keeps people in touch and makes our community global, but it's nothing more than a social crutch and Facebook has actually done the opposite of what it promised me. Social interaction should have the consequences that facebook robbed of relationships. Then the question arose, "What if I didn't have facebook?"

My response was really what scared me. "NO!" I cried out. And all at once all my fears arose. "How will people know what I'm doing? Who will laugh at my jokes? How will I get to know new people? How will I know what people are doing with their lives? How will girls get to know me?" I really want to know how I can hang on to something so insignificant as facebook. I clutch on to facebook with some crazy kung fu grip until it oozes out between my knuckles. My response to the question "What if I didn't have facebook?" is just dripping in bondage. All of my fears about not having facebook are squelched in light of the Gospel and how God truly created us to be in relationship with him and others. I can't honestly go on building my house in the facebook sand, relying on it to make me friends. I was fearfully and wonderfully made in the Image of God. He made me witty and charming and intelligent and good looking and generous and good hearted and if I'm blessed to have friends and influence they come from His plan in me alone. I will lean on his sovereignity for those things, not on facebook.

I want my life to be an open book where anyone has complete access to anything and everything about me, which is what I thought I had with Facebook. Rather than an all-access, open book, facebook is just the cover and the synopsis on the back. Facebook isn't even the spark-notes version of you or me. Let us buy each other's books and read them in full because God made the world too big to be as small as facebook has made it.