Relationships look funny on Facebook by esagor, on Flick
I’ve developed the habit of compulsively opening new tabs in firefox and going to facebook.com when i’m bored or looking for a break. It’s gotten pretty bad. When I’m bored in real life, i actually say to myself, in my head “ctrl+t, facebook.” Literally.
This is a crutch that I lean on when I have a particularly painfully large amount of work (read: schoolwork) that needs to get done. When I’m pulling a most-of-the-nighter to write a paper of finish a lab assignment I keep track of up-to-the-minute updates to my friends’ status’ (and the albums they are being tagged in, the notes they are commenting on, the videos they are uploading, etc etc). When I’m actually having fun or doing something interesting, I’m blissfully unaware of the fact that Jane-who-I-met-once-at-this-party-several-years-ago-but-still-stalk-on-facebook is “no longer listed as single” (I’m not bitter) (Jane isn’t a real person) (really, she’s not) (don’t make fun of me).
This habit of alt-tabbing to give myself a brief break and release some stress is probably a habit that should be kicked altogether, but for now I’m going to focus on replacing it with something more productive: feed-reading. I’ll skim some headlines, read a few short blog posts, and catch up on webcomics. I’ll also follow my friend feeds on twitter and identica.
Wait, isn’t that just like looking at your news feed on facebook?
Well, kind of. Except that my identica and twitter feeds are full of thoughts and news from some more interesting people (lots of big players in the Free Culture movement). It’s more newsworthy, or at least more interesting and valuable to me. Jane isn’t on twitter telling me about how happy she is with her stupid boyfriend (not bitter) (she doesn’t even exist) (I don’t want to talk about it).
