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I concede that the fellow in the picture is a little eerie. But yes, I would wear this shirt in public. At least every other day. If anyone wants to buy it for me, let me know…
“Excuse me but I dont me to be rude. But your saying people who use facebook have a lower intellect and dont read. For your information I am an avid reader and I’ve even tried to write my own books several times. My success does not depend on whether I use facebook or not! Therefore, you shouldn’t group people that actually have lives with people who don’t” – Lucas N.
Dear Lucas,
I appreciate that you took the time to share your concerns. As the president of the AFLI, I welcome constructive criticism as it is my constant aim to improve and perfect this alliance. Perhaps I have too easily fallen into the trap of classifying people. Immature classifications are something I sincerely dislike, so I will certainly take steps to avoiding such categorizing in the future. Yet, what I think you need to realize is that the AFLI promotes itself as anti-Facebook, not anti-people-who-use-Facebook. AFLI members believe that Facebook is a thing to be opposed because it inherently debases the intellect. This is not a judgment on all persons who use Facebook, for we readily acknowledge that many users do not realize the problems the site promotes. We are anti-Facebook, and we believe that the grave problems of Facebook need to be brought to light. A sound but commonly overlooked tool to understanding one of the fundamental problems with Facebook is found in the “pie-principle.” Imagine your day as a pie, any flavor you like. Each activity which claims part of your time gets a slice. Whenever you add a new activity into your day or allow a casual activity to take a bigger slice, the amount of pie remaining for the other claims diminishes. If you add Facebook in, something else goes. When I say that “people don’t read anymore,” I am employing caricature, that is, exaggeration to point out a particular quality of something. One quality of my generation which I find very alarming is the minute number of people who read, and the even tinier number of people who read the Great Books. The fact that reading has disappeared proportionally to the rise of TV, the Internet, etc. is not random. While you can find time for both reading and Facebook, you cannot find time for as much reading if you are on Facebook. You are still losing a portion of your pie by adding in Facebook. What Facebookers universally need to question is whether or not Facebook is enhancing their lives. They need to consider what activities got robbed of their pie slices once Facebook came into the equation. They need to consider how big a chunk of pie Facebook receives, and whether or not the slice is more deserved by some other activity. Of course, none of us are perfect and we do not live in Utopia. But Facebook is a worldwide pie-stealing phenomenon that needs to be put behind bars. In some lives at least. I would hazard to say in most lives. This is just something to chew on, without bringing in ethics, security reasons, or the more drastic effects of Facebook on society. While your success does not merely depend on whether or not you use Facebook, it does depend on how you divide up your life. And of course, we must call into question what we mean by “success.” If you consider success to be achieving your Farmville goal, Facebook will be an asset to you, indeed, perhaps your only means to success. But if you consider success to be leading the good life, spending your time in really worthy pursuits, Facebook may well be a distraction from the high road. I have never seen character growth result from Facebook. A final point, I am fully aware that a number of people on Facebook have a “higher intellect” than I. A few I could name right now, and I am just as certain that the others exist. I am very young, so I try not to be presumptious. Jacques Maritain once wrote, citing Aristotle, that a man can’t write well about ethics until he is at least fifty. I figure that until I can try my hand at ethics I should explore as many spheres of human action as possible. The effects of technology on culture particularly interests me, therefore the founding of the AFLI. In conclusion, I hope this “treatise” has helped to explain more fully what the AFLI tries to do. When someone commented that this site was “sincere, decent, and makes sense,” I took it as a great compliment. It’s what we aim for. Believe me when I say that at the bottom of it all is a spirit of charity, we desire to help others see the toll Facebook is having on individual lives and culture at large. A lofty mission? Yes. But I suppose that’s why I pursue it.
Best wishes Lucas! Keep reading and writing!
S. J. Buckner, President
So Dr. Boli [http://drboli.wordpress.com] is at it again with his sometimes bizarre, sometimes comic, and sometimes delightfully pointed sense of fun. Are the following advertisements from his Celebrated Magazine poking fun at our pretty much illiterate generation? Just maybe.
- “The Blandville Branch Library will offer a one-hour talk entitled “What Is a Book?” on Saturday, May 2, at 1 p.m. The audience will have the opportunity to see and handle several books after the talk.”
- “THE BLANDVILLE BRANCH Library will be having a Giant Book Sale beginning Monday and continuing until all the books are gone. The Library staff have decided that the Library can no longer afford to maintain a collection of books when computer workstations are so expensive.”
- “The Community Television Viewers’ Association will be offering a free workshop all day Tuesday. With the Internet rapidly overtaking television in popularity, we are concerned that the skills required to absorb purely passive entertainment are being lost. Third-generation television viewers will be on hand to teach you the secrets to a rewardingly inert television-viewing experience. “
One reader funnily commented about the last two announcements, ”I fear that you may have inadvertently posted real news in the [above] paragraphs. Please try harder at parody and satire in the future.”
The Bottom Line: People do not read anymore; instead, they spend time on distracting social networking sites like Facebook. This has disastrous effects on personal lives. This will have a disastrous effect on culture at large. If reading continues to decrease and writing to deteriorate, we shall all soon be certifiable barbarians. Which somehow doesn’t appeal to me.
Conversation (and here I mean real, live, face-to-face conversation) is officially a Lost Art. Facebook deserves at least an honorable mention in the subtle slaughter of true conversation. For the record, I loathe (yes, loathe) the modern habit of ignoring the person right next to oneself while texting rapidly, playing an inane game on the phone, or skimming Facebook.
“Without the habit of conversation in homes, schools, and social occasions, the memorable reality of people, the sheer enjoyment of the play of speech, the liveliness of the truth, and the medicine of common sense leave the realm of ordinary experience and become the vestiges of an ancient past, and the whole quality of life becomes reduced to the banal and pathetic.” -The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization, by Mitchell Kalpakgian
The Facebook Warning Label:
Caution! Side effects of this drug WILL include: narcissistic tendencies, sluggishness, loss of tangible relationships, watery eyes, insecurity in the sense that people now know more about you than you could imagine, headaches, a decrease of common sense, an inability to write full sentences with capitalized letters and correct punctuation, loss of time, an incapacity to act in real-world situations and to respond to real live people, split-personality syndrome, and gradual loss of brain cells. Use at your own risk.
<img src=”http://www.weblogcartoons.com/cartoons/i-have-nothing-to-say.gif” alt=”cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com” />
<p>Cartoon by <a href=”http://www.cartoonchurch.com/blog/”>Dave Walker</a>. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at <a href=”http://www.weblogcartoons.com/”>We Blog Cartoons</a>.</p>
This reminds me of a Roman proverb I read in Latin class a few years back. I believe it went like this:
“There is a time when something should be said. There is a time when nothing should be said. But there is no time when everything should be said.”
Facebook indulges and thrives on people who say way too much.
I just skimmed an article from the “Australian Humanities Review” (don’t ask me how I found it, the Internet is a strange tool indeed) by one Meaghan Morris. She treats the subject of Facebook and one part of her article notes the phenomenon of “instrumental or desperate friend-accumulation” and the existence of ”Addicted to Facebook” groups on the site itself. Apparently, one member of such a group penned this poem, what Morris generously called a “well-turned, 14 stanza ballad.” I just had to post this poem, sweetly entitled ‘Can I be your Facebook Friend?’:
“Can I be your Facebook Friend?
Friendship’s new reality
And we’ll celebrate our union
For all cyberspace to see
Can I be your Facebook Friend?
Cause this friendship is unique
We can hold a conversation
And we never have to speak
If you add me as your friend
I’ll accept of course, and then
I will sit here on your profile
You won’t hear from me again”
You have to love the irony of it. Morris says: “This poem nicely catches the nuances of the ‘Facebook addict’ type: an anti-social, agoraphobic, ‘low maintenance’ lurker who is also a passive-aggressive and voyeuristic stalker accumulating useless social capital.” Ha, ha. A fun sentence which just might make my list of favorite anti-Facebook quotes. Two final words. One, do not bother reading Morris’ article. She is a Facebooker herself and, on the whole, she irked me. Second, I realize that not everyone who uses Facebook is an addict. But I do think that most individuals who claim that “I really don’t spend much time on Facebook!” would have a hard time quitting it for good.
Good readers beware! I have a feeling that the above poem will tempt me to try my own hand at AntiFacebook verse in the near future!
As you may have noted, I am adding a page entitled “100 Household Items With More Value Than Facebook.” Today I am thrilled to introduce the first item on my list…
#1: The Toothpick. It struck me last week that the toothpick is a most ingenious household item. Generally found in the kitchen, the toothpick has such a vast number of uses that it is impossible to count them all. A few of these uses are particularly notable. For example, the toothpick has been used for over three million years for pricking cakes, muffins, breads, and unruly bananas. Scientists disagree as to the reasoning behind this use. One group says that the puncture is supposed to remind the food item that “flour it was, and to flour it shall return.” This seems improbable because it does not explain the bananas. Another interesting toothpick use is that of the dueling toothpick. They stopped putting this in the history books, but toothpicks were universally used for all forms of personal warfare before swords were invented. You have probably heard, but rumor has it that the Prince of Sweden has a morbid fear of toothpicks. I can present no solid evidence for this, but I have a great deal of faith that, were someone to run wildly towards him with a toothpick, he would be afeared. Unusually enough, toothpicks can also be glued on construction paper in the shape of alphabet letters. This was used as an exercise for children in kindergarten until the 1960s, when the children inexplicably stopped figuring out how to make the ”C” and “S”. Moreover, if you so desire, you can put a toothpick halfway into your mouth and gnaw your teeth up and down. If you add a hat and mud, you may make a pretty convincing Iowa farmer impersonation. But no guarantees, for even toothpicks are not without imperfections. There are so many toothpick uses that I could go on for days, but all things must stop somewhere. So, log off Facebook today and spend some time pondering the toothpick. These little guys have a lot of wisdom packed into their skinny wooden frames.
