The Book of Face

How many Facebook friends do you have? I know some people who keep their friends list pretty tight, friend requesting and only accepting friend requests from those to whom they are actually already close. Some people friend everyone they've ever met or known and even accept requests from people who they don't know. I know people with friend's lists barely in the double digits, and others who are approaching 2,000 friends. I am somewhere in between. As of this sentence, my friend list (as of this moment)numbers 539. I could go through the list and tell you exactly how I know each and every person on my list. But as you can imagine, the number of those people with whom I am actually in regular contact is slim. (I now have 540 friends).

I often find myself feeling awkward when I become privy to the ups and downs of the lives of these 540 "friends." I have witnessed marriages, births, divorces, deaths. I know when relationships end, when friendships go sour, parties go bad, jobs disappear.

What does it mean for all of this information to be available so publicly? I feel I am a voyeur, given access to people's lives, but not necessarily feeling welcome to comment on them. And so I pray for people when it seems appropriate, silently congratulate them, look at their photos, read their blogs...maintain my distance.

Terrified of being alone, yet afraid of intimacy, we experience widespread feelings of emptiness, of disconnection, of the unreality of self. And here the computer, a companion without emotional demands, offers a compromise. You can be a loner, but never alone. You can interact, but need never feel vulnerable to another person.
-Sherry Turkle