25 (more or less) random thoughts about Facebook

It was Marshall McLuhan who said, “The medium is the message,” that a change in interpersonal and social behavior could be the effect of new media. Indeed, the Internet has created so many new ways for us to interact with each other.

I discovered free e-mail when I was in the sixth grade, along with the rest of my adolescent peers. Now, this was ages before e-mail was crucial to our schoolwork or anything similarly important. To us, our e-mails were basically our portal to the online universe, our own little inboxes of funny forwards and chilling chain letters that we could talk about the next day in school. Our e-mail addresses were our badges of creativity and personality — we threw in random and not-so-random numbers, underscores, and cutesy names, anything that seemed cooler than just our plain names. (Mine was whatever_monique.)

In high school, we discovered blogging, where we had our own but ironically public on-line journals where we could vent incoherently and indefatigably about anything as our friends read and commented. When I was in college, Friendster became insanely popular. People would have to wait longer to use the computer in our university public computer lab because others were patiently updating their profiles. Eventually, we began to upload pictures on Multiply, chat with each other through Yahoo Messenger (YM), call abroad for free through Skype, view and share videos through Youtube.

And then came Facebook. Nev-er have Marshall McLuhan’s words resonated with me more than now, when my friends (nine of them, to be exact, and counting!) have shared 25 random things about themselves in a note and asked me to do the same, when I’ve learned that one of my kabarkadas has a boyfriend through her status message, and when I catch up with my friends from abroad through Facebook Chat. It’s like Friendster mania all over again, but somehow a lot more pervasive in my everyday life. I have never been one of those people who can’t live without Internet, but there are some days that I feel completely out of the loop when I don’t check my Facebook (which is quite often). When I see people in person and ask them to update me, they just demand that I check my Facebook.

Websites such as Facebook have completely changed the way we interact. In fact, they have created new social dynamics. When we meet new people, we don’t just get their cell phone numbers anymore, we also add them as friends online. When we want to get to know someone better, we check (stalk?) their personal pages for pictures or other tidbits of information. (Admit it — you’ve done it, haven’t you?) Among our peers, the simple act of uploading and sharing pictures, which used to be done for posterity’s sake, has become a much-awaited event. Our friends get e-mail alerts that we’ve uploaded pictures or that they’ve been tagged in a new album. They look at the pictures, read the captions, and leave comments. They copy pictures and upload them on their own sites. Even if we don’t see them very often, we keep updated on our friends by regularly browsing their personal pages, blogs and online albums. Sometimes I just go through my home page and see what my contacts have been up to. What are they fans of these days? What high school pictures are they going to post next? (For some reason, my batchmates have been uploading a lot of our high school photos.) Which of our friends are reacting to their status messages?

It really is quite fascinating to observe how people behave and interact online. Aside from online conversations and comments, people express themselves in subtle footprints, like e-mail addresses (yes, sometimes they can still be quite telling about someone) or status messages left on YM or Facebook. Sometimes obvious and other times cryptic, these little things always give us an insight into the other person’s disposition, personality or even their current pursuits. One of my friends always puts the song he’s listening to in his YM status message while another puts song lyrics that represent his current mood. Others will leave a quick update on what they just did, watched, played, or ate. I recently talked with a friend who complained about Facebook status messages. “Some of them will write down, ‘Had a good day.’ Ano bang paki ko if you had a good day?!” she demanded as I dissolved into laughter. That’s what I relish about the Internet though. Whether they’re thought-provoking, soul-stirring or nonsensical, your status messages, political opinions, profile pictures, and even silly videos — you have a place somewhere. It still surprises me sometimes how reactive and participative people are online. Imagine — a note had people around the world voluntarily sharing random factoids about themselves. McLuhan believed that media is the extension of the human senses and mind, so the more we engage with it, the more of ourselves we share to others. You can only interact with so much people on your own, but when you go online, you magnify your capacity for expression, communication, and even socialization.