Being There
In 2007, a college student explained to me that he preferred Facebook to MySpace because MySpace (in his view) was for emo kids who liked Death Cab for Cutie and Facebook was for clever kids who liked words. “The Facebook interface is minimalist and not stupid or smeared with fingerpaint like MySpace,” he said, if I remember right. “It leaves room for wit.”
I, too, had been put off by the fingerpaint factor on MySpace and was eager for another kind of network, so I tried Facebook, which by then was open to nonstudents. The interface was indeed more restrained, but I didn’t see much wit until I came upon the site’s status updates. Status updates are part of a Twitter-like feature that induces members to publish their answers to the question “What are you doing right now?” Responses, which are confined to 160 characters, then show up on the Facebook homepages of the updater’s friends. My Facebook page went from a solemn chronicle–a record of who had changed their profile photos or listed a new hometown–to a collaborative epic in the style of Frank O’Hara:
Micheline is off in search of sneakers. Kristin is getting that pedicure, but they didn’t have I’m Not Really a Waitress. Had to go with In the Mood. Sean 1:20 and stumbling home. Thanks 2 all that came, especially those that contributed jager or tequila. Jenny is keeping Beelzebub at the stave’s end.
