Blog 8: Adbusters

I believe that the article makes a good point about social networking amounts to narcissism. However, I do not believe that it is taken to such a high level of of narcissism. I check facebook only about 4 times a week, and I have no interest in posting much of anything that updates my status of any kind. Because I do not have the facebook problem as does the author of the article, I can't say that I would agree to commit "facebook suicide". There are many people that use facebook as a means to keep in touch with others and don't really care about the updating of their own profiles. I happen to be one of them.

I can understand the obsessions many have with updating their profile to portray an amazing self, but I believe there's more to a person's narcissism and expression of self. Part of being humans, we need acceptance from our communities. We long for the common interests within our groups to get along. This is probably the biggest and most powerful reason to why we obsess ourselves over social networking. It has provided and it continues to provide us with the ability to do exactly that. We can be as forward as we wish, we can express ourselves more vividly, and most importantly, we construct ourselves to be what we want others to want and will accept. Whether it is to emphasize one's unique difference or simplying joining the bandwagon, it's all about the worries of rejection in the real world that lures us to mold ourselves to be that ideal image.

I think I will certainly lose the contacts rather than the comments and judgments that others have on my profile. It is certainly an easy way to keep up with others, however, what I find interesting is that if we really cared about those that we want to keep up with, we would not have a problem contacting them via phone or other contact of some sort to get updates on our friends and family. So why do we not do that anymore? Because we never did that to begin with. That is, we only kept in touch with those we know we would talk to, but those on facebook you can check every single one of them on your list that you have probably only met a few times, an aquintance that you will never talk to again, but you still wonder what they are doing. If you really believed that facebook and other social networking really is a community, then "facebook suicide" should not prevent you from continuing those relationships you oh so ''treasure'' when in reality you would not have treasured if it required any form of contact besides "stalking".