Facebook and Intelligence
AKIE BERMISS: Well here I go again — like the perennial Charlie Brown/Lucy football gag — lining up to kick the ball that is Facebook. Every time I defend it, I end up with egg on my face. Every quality it possesses which I find to be of note can promptly be cited in it most warped and perverse incarnation. What further can I do? What recourse is left to the intelligent mind defending Facebook? I’m backed in to a corner. And why?
The answer is: Lamebook.
For those who don’t know (or were not curious enough to click the link above) Lamebook is a site Molly put me on to that basically catalogs all of the lamest examples of failed humanity that take place on Facebook. And so I’m really not sure what argument I can make (with a straight face) for why Facebook shouldn’t be ended right now.
But I’ll try, nonetheless.
I guess what makes Facebook so potentially wonderful and so perpetually horrible is that it’s really a snapshot of our society. And, now that its international, Facebook may some day be a snapshot of the entire world. A scary prospect if you really think about it since the world is full of psychopaths and degenerates. I mean, we’re in agreement about that right? Assuredly, the genuine hope is that most people are decent, thoughtful people. That’s the hope. But I think we all know that for all the good, decent people out there there are people who are really grotesque human beings. And I don’t mean in terms of looks. I mean people who are hateful, violent, selfish and indulgent, inconsiderate and profane. Those people are out there and they are watching the same television shows as you. And looking at the same internet. And drinking from the same water supply. What are you gonna do about it, really? We’re all here.
What I mean to say is, Facebook is like a busy urban thoroughfare. Its got representation from every walk of life there. There are classy upper-crust types on Facebook, there are high schoolers and retirees, there are family people and there are alcoholic batchelors. Its just a random scoop of the general population at any given time. If you walk down, say, 7th Avenue in Manhattan during the evening you’re likely to run into all sorts of people. Some polite, some crude. If you ask a random person for directions they may be very clear and erudite but ill-tempered. Or they could be inarticulate and confused, but a very amiable person. Its really a toss up. Maybe you run in to someone you know! Then again, maybe not.
This generation of online social networkers is probably never going to understand the generation that came before it. We adults stand on the dividing line (like the generation that grew up during the Cold War). In the future, there won’t be anyone who knows what life was like before we were all not only connected to the internet but connected by the internet. The instancy, the plurality, and the rampant vulgarity will simply be a fact of life.
But now we come to the core question: is it Facebook which has made us like this or have we always been so? The most appalling thing about Lamebook is obvious casual illiteracy it has made popular. I am not saying the there wasn’t widespread functional illiteracy before Facebook (or Twitter or texting) but rather that now what one is affronted with is a deliberate lack of literary vigor. People who know well enough how to spell have decided its easier (and curiously, clearer) to perpetuate heavy handed abbreviation and fragmented language. What effect does this have on the liminal generation? Not much — I think those of us who know how to write can still do (some of us may be hard-pressed to do so, but we’d managed). It’s the coming generation I worry about. We know that children have a tendency to learn their first language by rote as more of a mimetic process of enlightened imitation than as an intellectual exercise. If the first commonplace written language they come across is the internet-pidgin are going to be sorely tested when they (if they) ever pick up a book.
On the upside, in an enlightened alternate universe, the internet-pidgin could become a functional universal common language and help usher in an age of enlightenment and understanding. The chances of that happening are… extremely unlikely. But a fella can dream.
So perhaps this is the end, friends. I can no longer carry-on defending Facebook when it is so over-run with baseness and vulgarity. While it may bring people together — its also probably bringing the wrong people together. And there’s nothing to be done about that. Its quite possible, actually, that we’re to young to safely use the technology we’ve got at our disposal. We’re like children playing with knives. I’m done in. I’m cut to the quick. O yet defend me, friend; I am but hurt. I can neither save Facebook, nor condemn it. I am a gear in its all-consuming machine. There is no escape. It shall have us all, eventually. And what it becomes is only the golem of our shared humanity. If we are at heart decent and civilized, that it what it shall reflect. But if we are, at heart, coarse, cruel, and evil it shall be reflected therein. Facebook is the Frankenstein monster of our own making.
And here endeth the lesson.
MOLLY SCHOEMANN: I approach this topic from a different side than Akie. I’m a self-professed hater of Facebook—and some might say that I profess too much. They may have a point, because lately I’ve found myself addicted to a couple of its offshoot websites: Lamebook and STFU Marrieds.
These sites are pure voyeuristic delight. You don’t know who any of the people are, so you are free to judge them without any kind of emotional attachment. There is no coherent narrative; just a collection of illiterate status messages and love and hate-filled back and forth wall postings. And photographs. Don’t forget the photographs. Lamebook has the best photographs—and by ‘best’, I mean, ‘most likely to make you fear humanity’. There are some taken during funerals with teenagers grinning and posing mischievously next to open caskets. Party pictures of people passed out and pissing themselves. A startling number of the pictures are of babies in all sorts of unacceptable situations and poses. An infant on a tanning bed (caption: “Annie’s first tan!”). A baby propped on a sofa surrounded by rifles. There are lots of babies whose parents (presumably) have posed them holding beer bottles or with cigarettes tucked into their rosebud mouths. And then there are the misspelled tattoos.
“Only God Can Jugde Me”.
“Your Stronger Than Your Think”.
Awful, terrible tattoos with obvious misspellings that the recipient is apparently unaware of until the photo is commented in by their friends in Facebook. “Lol that sux if that were me id be PISSED!”
STFU Marrieds is full of gooey back and forths between couples who are soooo in love that they need all their Facebook friends to bear witness.
“I am so blessed to have such a wonderful husband… We have such a deep spiritual, emotional and physical relationship…Do I believe in soul mates???? Of course I do!!!”
Of course there’s also the requisite relationship drama, back-and-forths between people arguing and breaking up with each other through their Facebook walls. Lots of people listed as “Single” then “Engaged” then “It’s Complicated” then “Single”, all with the requisite sturm und drang commentary between friends and interested parties.
“this is y I want to be singel can’t fucking go out one night with a friend with out her beening a fuck dumm ass…”
Underneath the screen shots of anonymous Facebook members is commentary from the person who submitted the screenshot, usually with some sort of back story.
“This was posted two days before their 6 month wedding anniversary. And they have 3 kids.”
Who can resist this?!? Not me. But it’s definitely eroding my faith in my fellow man, and in my fellow man’s ability to type out complete words and sentences.
“I just applyed for colledge!”
“Well,4 ne1 tht ive talked abt behind thier bak.Or 4ne1 tht ive hurt; Im SORRY!Ive (hanged (OMPLETELY!So if yu dnt have ne thin ni(e 2say 2me then jus dnt talk2me!…I dnt wish nethen bad upon ne1.”
Posts like this boggle my mind the most, as do the ones that are peppered with ‘lol’ as though it’s a nervous tic lol. They make me wonder seriously whether we are regressing in our use of the English language. By reducing our words and phrases to the absolute barest symbols possible to still convey some part of the original meaning, how can we not also be reducing the thought processes behind these words and phrases? When someone types (and reads) the phrase “OMG” or “LOL”, do they think, “Oh My God” or “Laugh Out Loud”? Or do they think some abbreviated approximation of those phrases, or do they think something in between?
I guess I should be comforted by the fact that, as Akie points out, Facebook is made up of a pretty big slice of the population, so it includes a mix of those at the top of the intellectual spectrum as well as those at the bottom. If I actually had a Facebook account, it would be made up of a group of smart, funny people who know how to spell. As it is, I’m just seeing the bottom of the Facebook barrel as culled by smart, funny people who know how to mock .