Recently I read an editorial in The Sunday Times insert Style (okay, I read it recently, as it has been sitting in an ignominiously large pile of other such unread inserts on the floor of my tiny flat--I can’t keep up with the avalanche! It’s taking over my life and valuable shoe storage space—but it was dated from 23 September of this year) by Shane Watson entitled “Imaginary Friends.” It amounted to a long rant about how people on social networks, such as Facebook, which was the especial target of this particular angry middle-aged woman attack, collect cyber “friends” but do not pursue honest adult relationships.
An exerpt (utilizing a typewriter-style font, which I found rather appropriate for this dinosaur):
“I admit to being gobsmacked, in the same way I despair when I see a thirtysomething reading Harry Potter, or a grown woman wearing plaits. One minute Facebook is the one that isn’t MSN that is keeping kids glued to their computer screens; the next, it is the only way for switched-on grown-ups to stay in touch. Leaving aside the obvious thought (dear God, is there nothing that exists exclusively for the young?), this latest development says something tragic about modern-day adult friendships.”
Well, Shane Watson, here is my well-considered, grown-up, and articulate response to your sadsack lament: HA!
As a 29 yr old, apparently I still qualify for another year in which I am allowed to read Harry Potter and wear my hair in braids and belong to Facebook (shock, gasp, I also have a Myspace account!). But come next August…all of these harmless and fun pastimes should get the axe if I want to consider myself an adult. Why is 30 the arbitrary cut-off date after which I must become boring and middle-aged, like Ms Watson?! Why not 40 or 50 or—dare I suggest this? NEVER! Actually, oops, I just referred to the article, and apparently the arbitrary cut-off for adulthood is the legal age of 21. That is even worse, when I think of all the fun I had this past decade…
In my opinion, the real sad tragedy is that according to people like Ms Watson, at some point you are not allowed to have fun any longer, and must sit around in tailored suits 24-7 discussing serious, erudite topics such as philosophy or house-and-home stuff like mortgages and childcare, and you also must forget all about anything you ever knew about the Internet and its usability (I mean it was only invented in what, the 1980s?) and instead sit around doing things by the slow old-fashioned stationery and pen method. Blech, save me from such a mundane existence!
If everyone subscribed to this woman’s ridiculous opinion, then my older half-sister and brother would not have found me on Myspace (they are much older and I have never even met my sister, although my older brother was at a family reunion I attended at the age of 3, but you’ll pardon me surely if I don’t remember him well), and we wouldn’t have started to get to know one another. What a powerful, awesomely random invention! At least, that was my thought at the time, and it hasn’t changed much in the interim, except that I have perhaps gained even more awe for the social media. For example, on Facebook, I keep up with the lives of friends I met while working on cruise ships—that sometimes controversial newsfeed is helpful for this. You can really get to know someone well in a short period of time on a cruise ship, but it is the nature of the industry that you move around a lot, and may or may not ever work with someone again. But that doesn’t mean you stop caring about what they do, or that you should just discard friendships because they are not in the here and now ! It’s like having a big extended family online. On Myspace, most of my friends are people from my hometown and some from cruise ships who haven’t migrated to Facebook, and I use the bulletin and blogging features to keep everyone updated with my shenanigans while studying abroad.
And what is wrong with that? I think that adapting to changing technology should not be the province of only the very young. It’s not like they are the engineers inventing it…well, at least til they become the super-rich media moguls in their young 20s…
I do agree with Ms Watson that some people on these sites are merely collectors of friends, and they get a good ego boost when they see that they have 100s of friends. But that is not necessarily the point of social media, is it? I am sure back in the day of Rolodexes and paper address books of the kind this woman, as a “real grownup,” must still employ despite the advantages of the computer age, that there were still people who would stuff their lists with mere acquaintances. And is there anything wrong with that either? At the least harmful, it gives someone with low self-esteem a little boost to their day. And you never know when a chance meeting with someone may come in handy later for a project you are working on, or an interview you need to make, or whatever kind of adult-y things might come up in the workplace, and you would thus be thankful you kept their card or email address or added them on Facebook or whatever.
I’m not an etymologist or anything, but I think that that is the whole idea behind the word “networking!” Just because these networks have been cyber-tized does not make them much different at heart than they were back in the day in the boardroom or convention hall or church or charity event or what-have-you…they are just faster, easier, and more efficient online.
That’s why adults who use them are “switched-on” and those who resist them are boring middle-aged snobs, like Ms Watson. Save me…I don’t ever want to grow up if I start thinking like her!
