butterflies under glass. to an anonymous friend: an open letter, that turned into something more universal.

here's what i think ails you, and forgive me for simplifying: social networking is the cause of, and solution to, all of your problems. think about it, if not for facebook, would you have felt connected to all those people? or even had the opportunity to be? (well, yes, but pretty much, no), but on the flip side, how many updates do you wade through daily about how so-and-so is "having a great time with the wife/hubby/girlfriend/whatever", or how they "just posted new pics of the baby", or how they "love the new job!", or how they "just bought the cutest bedroom set for the new place" et cetera, infinitum, ad nauseam?

here's where a little cynicism goes a long way: most people who are facebook/twitter excited about things that can only be exciting if you get excited about conforming to societal norms (follow?) are full of shit.

and this is where a little counter culture relieves a lot of stress: say you have 150 "friends" and each one posts an update, on average, 5 times a day. on average, i'd say 1 out of 10 people has a day interesting enough to update their status twice, and that person is too busy doing interesting things to do so. therefore factor out interesting persons (numbering 15, based on my math) on the grounds that they actually fall to the low end of (or off) the posting curve due to being too busy getting awesome. your list of "friends" has already been reduced to 135 people who are not doing anything particularly enviable, and can't wait to tell you about it. multiply by 5 and thats 675 posts about how completely great it is to live a completely normal and bland existence so long as no one can accuse them of being more than one standard deviation from center.

but you are not that friend.

you should be mr 1 out of 10, too busy getting awesome to have to filter out the facebook noise, or report back to the web-o-sphere about living life in the slow lame.

and insert counter culture in 3... 2... it's ok not to care about other people.

that is, it's ok not to care about who they claim to be on their social network.

is this counter culture? not to care about other people? absolutely.

most of the time we wander about the real world not caring about actual people, then get on our social network, and care way too much about their facebook/twitter profiles.

anything can be made to seem interesting when there's no one to refute the details, and when copy/paste/delete are right at your fingertips before you let anyone read about it. if someone wants to post about pics of "perfect" them and "perfect" wifey with "perfect" baby and "perfect" labradoodle having a "perfect" day out, ask yourself...

why?

anyone important to them would easily otherwise have access to this information, thus the facebook post is merely fishing for reactions. a cry out for popular reinforcement... validation that what they are doing is ok, and a litmus test for who they themselves deem worthy of caring about, because today, who you care about is all about reciprocation. if i don't comment on your tweet, ratchet me down a notch on the friend-o-meter.

but you know what? if you don't care, it doesn't make you a bad person. and i'm not saying that people who happen to conform to, or fall into, or actually enjoy the things deemed normal by society are boring, or invalid, or wasting their lives. i'm saying, if you are really excited about your baby (new car, etc), then great, i'm happy for you. if you're really excited about me being excited about your baby (job, etc) then why not invite me to meet this baby, or take me for a ride in this car, or tell me all about this job over a drink. and if we are not willing to go that far, then we have to admit that we just don't find the same things exciting, and on those points, it's not necessary to force feed one another the "good news", nor is it necessary for us to force ourselves to pretend it's exciting to us personally (ergo i can be happy that you are happy, but i don't have to be happy because of why you are happy).

i will tell you right now: you don't care what i did today, and if i posted about it (wait, aren't i... i mean, this is...) you don't have to comment on it to be my friend, and i have no right to judge you on whether or not you do so.

here's my tweet for today "up at 5. all work and no breakie, make dave a dull boy".

and i don't want your comments on that. if i had to receive feedback on that useless nugget of my life, i'd rather it be, "sorry, dave, couldn't comment on your idiotic tweet because i was: having spectacular sex/learning conversational pashto/interviewing for a spot on the first manned mission to mars, and there's no reception: in the sub-basement levels of the white house, for security reasons/atop the amazon rainforest canopy/in the uncharted tunnels of the french catacombs, and besides my hands were: sticky from all the meringue in maddona's hottub/broken when i failed to land that ski jump over the low flying helicopter/wrist deep in a birthing indian elephant.

let's get flowery (because you know what? i heard some smarty pants professor say that language in the texting age has evolved for the better, because flowery metaphors are being edged out for more efficient rhetoric, and fuck him). imagine each one of us is a petal on a blossom, and as we grow, we find ourselves connected to other petals, and eventually this group of connections will bear fruit (not kids, but, umm, lets say "compassion"), and if we step back to see the bigger picture, there are innumerable blossoms growing from each little twig on each branch of the big tree that is our world. kinda cool, right? we are all connected, in one way or another.

well, some asshat has convinced the world that the tech age has created that tree.

ASShat.

tech networking has done no such thing.

imagine now that we are all butterflies, and we have the ability to flit about on the warm summer breezes, and like the monarchs of the santa barbara mesas, we occasionally conglomerate in small groups, large swarms, or even hordes that block out the sun.

then you bought your phone, or opened your facebook account, or started twittering, and that's a pin.

a pin stuck through your self.

and now we are all butterflies pinned under glass with a little labelmaker 140-character description posted below (order: lepidoptera, species: ego singularis, domain: cyberspace, diet: corn-based artificially flavored nutrient supplemented amorphous food logs, bacon, ranch dressing), and we may have a few friends in here with us, or maybe we don't, but most of our friends are under a different piece of glass, across the room, or even just next to us on the wall, but contained, and partitioned off from us, and we're all screaming for attention, crying for help, but there's no one listening in this big old dusty room, anymore (did i just metaphor up the death of "god"? i think i just did. goddamn, i'm awesome. i mean ___damn, i'm awesome.). and we aren't questioning what happened to the world we were promised.

fuck, man, why aren't we questioning what happened to the world?

instead we are screaming, "this is awesome! u should c my glass box, its way better than urs! imho, lol!"

we think this is the world. we think that if someone cool told us this is right, then to feel like it's wrong is our mistake.

not so.

don't do that to yourself.

but herein lies the conundrum of the social network.

if i feel happy for you, but not with you, i still want to tell you. maybe just a little note, 140 characters or less, and maybe i wouldn't usually have the time stop by and tell you in person, or send you a hallmark card, but i can certainly take the time to post on your wall. because you know what? i love you, and that's the least i can do.

so where does the world go from here?

is it ok to accept that the absolute least we can do is good enough, if we do it for as many people as possible, as often as possible?

or is it better to do a little more, a little less often?

and whichever the case, is tech networking helping or hurting the effort?

that question was not rhetorical, because this time i don't have a smart ass answer...

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p.s.- an anecdote about the usefulness of facebook:

last year, when i was on facebook, i received lots of "happy 30th birthday" comments from close friends and family alike, on or around august 16, when facebook alerted my friends list that it was my birthday. some of those friends and family have been in my life so long that we actually graduated highschool together, some have even participated in throwing me birthday parties over the years, and the family? well, what can you say about family :) so for all those lovely birthday wishes, may i say: i'm not 30, and mid august is not even close.