I’ve been a Youth Minister, a
seminarian, and a student. I like Jesus, the Catholic Church, beer, wine,
friends, billiards, and video games. I have several favorite books and TV shows
I love to watch oh-so-much. I like to sing, to act, and to do Karaoke; and I
have pictures to prove it. I’ve been hiking, kayaking, to Rome and back,
and I like to show off my wit (or lack thereof) as often as the opportunity
presents itself; all this you can come to know in about 5 minutes browsing my
Facebook page. I know FB has been getting a lot of slack lately, which is
probably what inspired me to commit these thoughts to a blog no one reads, and
it’s made me ponder how FB has affected me when it comes to relationships of an
intimate nature. My findings, after a solid 15 minutes of deep and profound
thought, is that FB has the potential of hampering our ability to be authentic
with others, damaged our ability to communicate, and tainted our perception of
beauty and fulfillment.
 |
| "In the end I portray a character..." |
I am significantly more than a collection of
quotes, interest and past experiences. Yet as I create my online persona, even if
I draw from true aspects of my lives, I tend to never mention the uglier parts
of myself – the fact that I have glaring insecurities, doubts and struggles in
my faith, weaknesses, pet-peeves and idiosyncrasies. The danger here is that I
can start to feel pressured to uphold the online façade I have created; while
at the same time, I hide and repress the parts of myself I wouldn’t care to
mention. In the end I portray a character, and not the complex person that I am.
A video I recently watched, Innovation ofLoneliness, explained it as “I share, therefor I am.”
What the video also captures is
the paradox created by being overly connected, but not experiencing authentic community.
Likewise, I find that Facebook, texting, and other forms of “instant” text
based communication can really take a toll in our ability to communicate with
one another. Look at any young relationship today, I am willing to bet that 70%
of most relationships are started through the exchanging of texts or messages.
Where is the problem in this? We become proficient in pausing, editing, and
crafting “perfect” responses – responses that falsely represent who we are when
in genuine conversation. The effect is awkward, shallow exchanges of
conversation when you finally encounter a person face-to-face, and general
uneasiness if conversation shifts into silence. |
| "often portraying unrealistic...beauty..." |
Perhaps the most affected is my
perception of beauty. I become so obsessed with what “others” are posting, the forced
experiences, the perfectly angled photographs, the supposed exotic or novel
locations, I continuously feel like I am becoming socially inept, or at the
very least, uncool. I have become remarkably self-conscious and selective in
photographs of myself, ever weary of the image I have fostered over the years.
I become ever more critical of the photographs of others, often portraying
unrealistic examples of beauty, or over sexed images. The net effect is a ravishing
and desolation of our appetites; and what we find existing in nature no longer
is able to satisfy.
So where does this leave me? In
short, gimped. While Facebook is not fully to blame, of course, I wonder how
different it would be to live in a time without Facebook. As I approach a
friend, perhaps a girl that I would like know more intimately, how great would
it be not to have the hundreds-of-thousands of “perfect” images of other women
bouncing around in my head, how great would it be not to have to live up to a
profile-persona that has slowly constricted my personally to only those parts I
find worthy to share, how great would it be to enter into an authentic
conversation with an individual, expressing the fullness of my humanity, and
not just the neat little corner I’ve prepared for public view? I will end this discombobulated, uninformative rant with this: In all this I have a deep, burning desire: to love fully, and be fully loved. To bring glory to God by being “a man fully alive.”
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