Week 3 : What is Facebook to YOU?

Week 3 Journal Entry

Facebook

Facebook in its most purest form, like many other social media platforms that exists in this day and age, is there to share information. It’s used to tell a story, and that can be by sharing things that interest you or telling your story.

I’d like to divide my experience on Facebook into a few stages :

• ·       Observing
• ·       Being a part of a community
• ·       Sharing
• ·       Watching

From what I could remember, the first time I used Facebook was simply to see what was on my news feed. Based on my circle of friends, sometimes they would share things that would have similar interests with me. These pictures or videos that showed up on my feed mostly contained art or entertainment and likewise I would enjoy viewing it and leave a like and comment. I still do this, aimlessly spending a lot of my time scrolling through my news feed, not looking for anything specific. I realize this is a great waste of time, but I find it quite hard to stop.

Back then I was more generous with my likes. But as I got older, I learned that Facebook is a tool for people to advertise as well. According to News Strait Times, Google and Facebook dominates the digital ads market. In 2015, Facebook’s annual report on business stated that its online advertising in the US had reached US$59.6 billion. Despite the rise of other social media like Instagram or Twitter, Facebook is still extremely popular. It being the 2^nd most visited website, with the top being Google itself. Knowing this, I did not like to give people the money they would get from advertising if I clicked like or comment.

Facebook also offers other forms of activities, such as community art projects. When I was 16, I had entered a Facebook group called Eclipse Academy, which was very fun. Every month group admins would hold an event which everyone in the group had to take part in to get points. So each member had to draw something following the theme of the event. We would also actively chat with each other about activities in the group and eventually we would get new friends. Every artwork we did we did for free, and the only reward was to progress through till the next event with our friends. It was fun to be part of a community like that and it was a good way to improve our social skills.

At some point in my early university life, I was going through some personal problems that I could not express them like I normally do. These problems involved other people and I was not at liberty to disclose it to anyone else. However, it did not solve itself, but dragged on for a few months. So, I was upset for quite an amount of time. In these few months, I had resorted to a form of expression on Facebook. It was not something I would usually do on Facebook because I knew the negative effects of this. I myself had seen people in my friend list whine about their problems, posting several statuses a day about what bothered them, and felt it somewhat annoyed me.

I did this too, because it was the only way I could find relief. Several times, and almost every day, I would post something cryptic and sad. It had to be cryptic enough for me to hide what was actually happening, but clear enough for me to gain the satisfaction of having someone understood what I was feeling. It began to be a place for me to write short stories to express what I was feeling.

I wrote things like :

Something nagged at her these days, she didn’t understand.

It was a calling, a reminder, of something.

But what was the something?

Hell if she knew.

She didn’t even know if it was important.

It must be important, for it wouldn’t stop.

Perhaps, she thought, perhaps if I had peace, I would find out what it is.

Or perhaps I should let go of it.

A simple like or comment would boost my mood only a little bit. But what I was looking for was a way to share my feelings and lessen the burden I carried.

Also as an artist, I found myself being poetic at times, and shared more positive things I wrote :

 “There’s only one star out tonight,” He blurted out on their walk back to their dorms, pointing to the air. She looked up from the ground and scanned the sky.

“That’s a satellite. See? It’s not blinking,” she responded after a seconds delay.

“Don’t ruin it with your logic, it’s romantic.”

“It’s not romantic. It’s lonely.”

He paused, and she stopped a few steps further from him, “Nah, there are probably a bunch of stars all around it. You just can’t see because it’s a cloudy night.”

This one I felt the message was very clear and simple. It was to convey hope, despite how lonely it seems.

I suppose at this point I was using Facebook as a way to express myself and as an artist, I loved to show my work to others and get their opinion on it. Despite not being a lot, every like or comment seemed to tell me “Hey! I liked what you wrote here!” and it would give me satisfaction to know I reached out to someone and touched their feelings like that. Afterall, Facebook is for sharing information, this time in another form.

As for sharing others posts, I use it to share things I like or things that would explain how I feel. Despite this, some things I shared and private it to only myself. This might be because I don’t want others to see what I liked. The post I private might because I didn’t want other people to change their opinion of me, or saw me in a bad light. There are also other things I filtered from specific people, so that they didn’t see what I wrote. I didn’t want them to see that side of me, so I filtered what they saw. I created an ideal image of myself for others to see.

In conclusion, Facebook can be quite a complicated way of life. But I would say the complexity of it is almost the same as real life in terms of privacy, confidentiality and social systems. If you don’t post something on Facebook in a while, people will think you died. The same goes for not going out of your house for the past few months, people will think something happened to you. As for having a set image on Facebook you want people to see you in, it goes the same for real life as well. You always want people to think a certain way about you. Maybe you want people to think you’re cool, so you share or post things that look aesthetic or hipster. In real life, you wear clothes outside that make you look cool. The posts and statuses we have on our Facebook wall is our clothing. In terms of confidentiality, you will always hide things from others, be it in the virtual or reality because certain things are just not meant for everyone to know. And some things people find out by digging around in your past, or your old Facebook posts. From a certain angle, they are different, but also quite similar. I would say, Facebook or ‘the virtual world’ has become another way of life for us as human beings.