little boxes, little boxes all the same
Mar. 1st, 2009 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sanpaku_backupWith the inevitable agglomeration of "friends" on Facebook comes a plethora of short, pithy "status updates" when you log in. Boxes with faces that bear a distant relation to a half-remembered visage from some previous life or other -- an old job, high school, a trip to Israel -- ten or fifteen or twenty years in the past. All in their thirties, all with formerly-private little moments of kids and television and work and domestic fun and the occasional clarity of self-realization. On a never-ending wheel of self-display, ready for your viewing pleasure. It's a strange thing to contemplate.
I just finished reading Revolutionary Road, which is one of the cruelest and most precise disembowelings imaginable of the kinds of people that most of us are, present company most certainly included. (In fact a large part of the point is that ye who think you're better than, are in the worst shape of all.) And so you look at the boxes and think of how behind the smiles, or between the little bits of chatter, are every weapon of personal combat and every form of emotional injury known to humankind. They're there in the quiet spots, the things people can't bear to say aloud.
But more than that: there's something surpassingly strange about a culture in which our smiles and our little moments of kismet are the ones we put out on display, like Christmas decorations in the window. It used to be you just had to point to the house and the life in the suburbs to explain yourself -- but that's not enough anymore. Now, to exist, you need to shove your grinning self into everyone's face. Is it our generation's form of conspicuous display, some kind of Veblen-esque way that we make an emblem out of our mundane middle class existence?
Yeah, I haven't posted here in a while. It would be wrong to say that this medium is one that doesn't represent me well -- in fact, it's one that does catch all too well certain aspects of myself that I'd just as soon forget. But there's a bigger issue looming here. Maybe the life is just starting to feel like one that I can't represent accurately with this part faux-confession, part faux-self-advertisement form anymore. It would be tempting to say that I've failed as an artist in this medium, because that's how it feels? But maybe it's that the things I feel like saying just aren't sayable here, in any way that feels true anymore.
I just finished reading Revolutionary Road, which is one of the cruelest and most precise disembowelings imaginable of the kinds of people that most of us are, present company most certainly included. (In fact a large part of the point is that ye who think you're better than, are in the worst shape of all.) And so you look at the boxes and think of how behind the smiles, or between the little bits of chatter, are every weapon of personal combat and every form of emotional injury known to humankind. They're there in the quiet spots, the things people can't bear to say aloud.
But more than that: there's something surpassingly strange about a culture in which our smiles and our little moments of kismet are the ones we put out on display, like Christmas decorations in the window. It used to be you just had to point to the house and the life in the suburbs to explain yourself -- but that's not enough anymore. Now, to exist, you need to shove your grinning self into everyone's face. Is it our generation's form of conspicuous display, some kind of Veblen-esque way that we make an emblem out of our mundane middle class existence?
Yeah, I haven't posted here in a while. It would be wrong to say that this medium is one that doesn't represent me well -- in fact, it's one that does catch all too well certain aspects of myself that I'd just as soon forget. But there's a bigger issue looming here. Maybe the life is just starting to feel like one that I can't represent accurately with this part faux-confession, part faux-self-advertisement form anymore. It would be tempting to say that I've failed as an artist in this medium, because that's how it feels? But maybe it's that the things I feel like saying just aren't sayable here, in any way that feels true anymore.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 12:34 am (UTC)eh. Facebook status updates are generally only available to one's friends. I think of it more as a "here's how I'm doing" greeting card to friends/family, keeping basically in touch without a huge amount of effort. If you don't want to see someone's status, you can just take them off your friends list.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 01:36 am (UTC)I know there are filters and suchlike, but I guess the bigger point is that people expend thought on these updates that sort of by definition say nothing. Nothing of significance can go into a tweet. It's like screaming to the world that you've had a cheese sandwich. I guess the exhibitionist/narcissistic streak in all of this online culture is just starting to wear thin on me these days.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 03:23 am (UTC)well, yes and no. I mean, Patrick will update with something like "today we bought birds" with a link to a pic. Or a friend might say "feeling sick" or "vacationing in Hawaii" or "mad about XYZ political thing" or "just gave birth!" While not hugely deep, I think these things are useful to share w/friends.
and I'm not too concerned with people I don't even know feeling like I'm being unfriendly ;)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-02 04:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-05 04:40 am (UTC)