The changing face of Facebook
According to my Facebook page, I've had my FB account since 2005. That sounds about right. I moved to Foreign Country in 2004 and I know I started my Facebook account there. Probably at the insistence of the ladies in my book club as a fun way to stay in touch.
If you were to look at my FB Wall from back then, there were a lot of short, say-nothing yet fun status updates. There were comments from friends - friendly, witty conversations about everyday occurrences. These were friends I worked with and saw on a regular (sometimes even daily) basis and here we were, extending our friendship beyond the face-to-face to Facebook.
I remember there was a time when my work friends, who were literally across the hall from me, would post status updates in other languages. I believe this was the brainchild of my friend AUW. She went to Google translate, typed in an everyday phrase and translated it into a language none of us, her Facebook friends, spoke (which was a bit of a challenge since we were an international bunch). Then she'd cut and paste the translation into a status update. For those of us who read the update, it was our job to figure out exactly what language it was, and then we'd type a response. I am an ESL teacher so that makes me a language nerd. I LOVED THIS GAME! It went on for days on our Facebook pages! We'd try to decipher a message that said "We need to go fly a kite this weekend" in Vietnamese or "I need to borrow a crockpot" in Romanian. and the conversation would go on in that language. Long live Google translate!
There was a period of time when I felt that my Facebook time was out of control. I spend hours a day scrolling through other people's Walls. There weren't many ads back then and most FB pages were of real people, not businesses or "communities". But I recognized that my social media consumption was out of control. I would sometimes deactivate my account to help me take a break from it.
Now, I'm not on Facebook that much. My Newsfeed is inundated with ads and news. Mostly, they are pages I've "liked", such as The Huffington Post (one place where I get my news from), but... what happened to my friends?
How did something that used to be so fun turn into a platform for such negativity? I'm not even talking about the bad news I read about every day. I'm also referring to the negativity that people post as comments. How did we all become such angry people who lash out at strangers online?
On of my favorite writers, Glennon Doyle Melton, writes, "If you're not kind on the Internet, you're not kind" and that resonates a lot with me. I consider myself a kind person and while I have been known to assertively express my opinion, I always try to do so without anger, without judgement, and without being rude. There's no need for that.
I am a huge fan of Humans of New York, a photo blog by amateur photographer (and potential Nobel Peace Prize candidate??) Brandon Stanton. The concept couldn't be simpler: talk to people on the street. Take their picture. Write up an excerpt of what they said. Shine a light on one person's story at a time. HONY has almost 18 million followers. We can't get enough of these glimpses into people's lives!
One particular post was of a pair of well-worn brown leather boots and the subject's ankles. That's all. The interview was about how the subject and his girlfriend had just aborted their child. He explained that it was just not the right time in their lives for a child. When I read the interview, I prepared myself mentally: deep breath.... Ok, I'm going into the comments. "You murdered a baby!" "You'll have to answer to God." "I pray you'll forgive yourself for taking a life." "A child is not something you can throw away just because it's inconvenient!" "If you can't handle the responsibility of having a child, don't have sex!" Sprinkled liberally between these condemning comments were posts by people who gave encouragement or people who would say "don't judge because you don't know what they are going through."
I just felt compelled to add my voice and so I wrote the following comment: "To the people judging him and his partner for the "murder" of a child, I sincerely hope you never have to make a decision like his. For everyone who says he should have used protection, what makes you think he didn't? And for the man who said we shouldn't abandon things just because they are unwanted, a child is not a broken toaster. If someone has a child, they are committing themselves, heart, soul, body, mind, AND bank account for at LEAST 18 years. That is not a decision to take lightly. Giving him advice on what he should have done or judging him for what he did does no one any good. A decision this difficult and heartbreaking deserves empathy and understanding."
My comment got nearly 5000 likes, which surprised me. People really responded to what I said, some commending me for such a compassionate comment, others condemning me for my words, others insisting I was judging others for judging. I responded to many of the comments and it was an interesting experiment in online discourse. I am still proud of what I wrote, mostly because I was able to be kind on the Internet, the same way I strive to be kind in real life.
Facebook and other social media have had a huge impact on society and on how we conduct ourselves in public online spaces. Although it is easy to hide behind a curtain of anonymity online, I believe that the way we conduct ourselves when no one knows who we are says a lot about who we really are.
