I’ve sold my soul: I got a Facebook account
Goodbye, pastimes. Goodbye, constructive hobbies. Goodbye, friends and family. Goodbye, life.
I’ve sold my soul to an electronic demon and it shall possess me evermore.
I got a Facebook account.
After years of vacillating, evading, whining and excuse-making, I gave in.
I had insisted up to this point that I didn’t need a Facebook account.
I was quite happy maintaining my relative anonymity on the World Wide Web with nothing more than a few user accounts here and there on the Internet Movie Database and Yahoo.
My friends badgered me constantly, saying that they weren’t able to keep in touch with me.
I retorted that we all possessed perfectly serviceable cellular phones and e-mail accounts, and that should do just fine for anybody.
I had survived the first 20 years of my life without any kind of informational Internet utilities that would broadcast information, pictures, quotes, interests, contact data and occupational statistics about me all over cyberspace.
Cleaving to my nonconformist nature I folded my arms and vowed to remain without Facebook for perpetuity.
Until one fateful Friday, that is.
Being possessed of an open mind as well as a nonconformist nature, I had signed up for a trial membership with Facebook to find out how many people I knew were actually on Facebook.
(Only later would I realize that the proper question to have asked would have been “How many people do I know who aren’t on Facebook?”)
Then I checked my e-mail and discovered that someone whom I knew had inexplicably “added me as a friend” to their Facebook account.
That did it. I had to reciprocate. Someone had gone to the trouble to seek me out and label me as their friend for the entire world to see.
Without thinking I signed up for the full-blown account and added that person right back.
I spent the next hour adding all the rest of my friends and another 41 hours personalizing my profile.
I was hooked. I had caved like a … like a … like a cave that had caved in.
I had flung myself into the electronic whirlpool from whence I had run screaming for so long. And best of all, I didn’t mind it one bit.
Instead of the revulsion or confusion I expected to feel, I was elated.
Suddenly I was speaking with people I hadn’t spoken with in years.
Communication was possible at a speed and scale I never thought possible.
I was liberated, not imprisoned.
Some weeks later, here I am, spending hours adding new and unique quotes to my profile, writing on people’s walls, sending strange and esoteric messages to my friends and adding anyone whom I ever said “Hello” to as a friend.
So, for the benefit of all my friends, who are undoubtedly sitting there with smug smiles on their faces, I’ll say this: go pound sand.
Just kidding. What I actually mean to say is this: I should’ve done it ages ago.
Andrew is a senior studying mass communication.
Columnists' opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of The Spectrum