I met Facebook June, 5 2008. I broke up with Facebook December, 25 2013.
When I first joined, I had been encouraged by friends to abandon MySpace, the major player in the social media scene. The simplicity of Facebook was foreign to me. I was initially resistant and weary of Facebook's cool nature. It was so clean. So nice. Myspace had the rugged appeal of tattoos: customizable backgrounds, cursors, and music on profile pages. I could even keep my best friends close and my frenemies closer with the option of highlighting my Top Eight.
But Facebook was the nice guy that won me over.
My first post was "Sarah Thomas is being WAY productive." Oh, how that would change.
I spent five years posting status updates, pictures, videos, and links with Facebook. With what I imagined were a respectable amount of likes and friends, I felt like we were getting along pretty well. Things took a turn, however. Eventually I found myself listlessly tagging along with no goal, no ambition, just blind desire to mindlessly scroll, click, scroll, click.
My last update was "If you've got a flying time machine, why are we on a motorbike?" I was supposed to be studying for finals when I posted it. Instead, I was sitting in front of two screens with tab upon tab open to various websites. The post was a quote from Clara Oswald, the companion on the most recent season of Doctor Who. I even had the gall to leave it uncredited, unquoted, and perhaps worst of all, unoriginal.
I tried to forge a new relationship with Instagram to distract from my waning interest in status updates and picture likes. Instagram was nice, but our time together was awkward and short-lived. In a space devoted to pictures, I lamented the loss of words.
Twitter and I have a sort of, I know you know that I know you, but we still won't acknowledge each other type of relationship. We interact only when necessary.
Finally, I found Tumblr. We met spring of 2013.
Tumblr was different. Captioned pictures of cats doing funny things! Screenshots of serious moments from The Walking Dead with hilariously inappropriate dialogue! "The alien beauty of Benedict Cumberbatch"! Tumblr is a champion of thriving in geekdom, while Facebook perpetuates popularity complexes in all social settings.
Things are looking up as I continue scrolling down,
and down,
and down.
To hear what Virginia Prescott, Brady Carlson, and Taylor Quimby have to say about Facebook, listen to their roundtable discussion.
