Why facebook? Why Now?

Why Facebook?  Why now?

As a self-indulging contrarian, I’ve managed to steer clear of facebook for some time now.  It was a conscious effort to avoid blending in to the masses, a way to avoid being just like everyone else.  The facebook groundswell became a tidal wave while I was going to graduate school and working full-time, and so conveniently, I just didn’t have time for indulging in the trivial world of social networking.  Or at least being that busy afforded me the chance to avoid participation in the ménage-a-web.  I didn’t see the point, really.  If I truly was friends with someone, wouldn’t I see them already?  Wouldn’t I talk with them on the phone every now and again?  Or pay my social dues to them via a simultaneously clever and bland email once in a while, or the Christmas card family update?  I’ll forward them a link to a funny clip of a wipeout, an mpg of an unsuspecting baseball dad getting a line drive to the junk, or some adorable kitty videos.  Maybe I’ll send them a nice text on their birthday.  That, my friends, is interaction!

Well, against my better judgment, I have finally taken the plunge and added a facebook account to a growing list of redundant web-enabled participatory endeavors to which I am only half-heartedly involved (for instance, this blog).  It’s just another list in a long line of revolutionizing aps that I’m not totally enamored with, but for some reason feel obligated to take part in.  It’s an internalized and entirely imagined peer pressure to which I am succumbing, but I don’t believe that is even accurate, because no one has really asked me in some time why I don’t have a facebook account.  Maybe it’s the lack of people asking about my facebook that led me to believe I actually needed one.  To fill a non-void.  That’s more my style.

So why am I now a member?  Why now?

Maybe I’m now signing up to pre-emptively screen my kids’ future facebook accounts.  I know that soon they will be venturing on their own into this virtual maze.  And just like monitoring what youtube videos they watch, and what websites they can visit, what TV shows/movies they should or shouldn’t watch, I’m realizing that in order to properly understand what they are doing with their friendly online communications will require that I understand the inner-workings of this e-organism.   I need to take those baby steps first, fall down and scrape my knees on friend requests, likes and dislikes, twitter rants, seedy photo posts, etc., so that I can guide them through their introductory facebook stages and help in guiding them to avoid the evils that lurk.  That sounds very responsible of me, right?  But that’s not really my full motivation.  A noble side-benefit, but not entirely the real objective for joining.

I might be doing it for a social reason.  When I say “social reason,” this is not code for “looking up old flames.”  It is not to clandestinely check in on former acquaintances.  Actually, there was some facebook friction that took place recently with some extended family, and there could be some voyeuristic aspect of those conflicts that might appeal to some, but that’s not really my thing.  I’m sure I’ll have my opportunity in the future to cause this type of conflict, but I’ve missed out on that so far, and frankly, the probability of that type of conflict happening was one reason to avoid facebook thus far.  But I would like to think of myself as a social person, and that this is just another way for me to socially interact with friends and family.  The alleged social aspects of the program are a genuine motive for signing up for facebook, and part of me subscribes to this notion of a virtual community.  It takes an i-village, and I’m just a citizen here.

I must admit, I have been impressed (and distraught) by how pervasive facebook seems to be with everyone I know, and how quickly people respond to things.  I’m glad I’m able to check in with friends I haven’t seen or thought of in years.  It’s cute to see the mini-versions of people I grew up with in their childrens’ faces.  The fact that I have over 100 friends with fairly little effort on my part and within the first few days of signing up is indicative of how universally ubiquitous facebook is.   It has nothing to do with how compelling I am as a person, I’m pretty sure.

But I think the real reason I’m singing up now has to do with the creepy IPO video that facebook released and then promptly removed from their web arsenal.  That’s what appealed to me.  In advance of releasing their IPO today, May 18, 2012, facebook showcased a 30 minute commercial detailing their plans for global dominance.  This is a rather unconventional step for a company on the eve of their IPO, but facebook prides itself in doing things their own way, and they weren’t going to allow some trivial stepping stone like a once-in-a-lifetime-highest-IPO-valuation-ever opportunity to pass them by and do it like everyone else!  They were going to be different!  Because that’s what facebook is!  It’s different!  It’s not Myspace, or Pinterest, or Yahoo Social, or Youtube!  It’s all of those things and more!  So instead of meeting face to face with Wall Street investment bankers, instead of detailing their financials in person and jumping through the usual IPO hoops like everyone else does, they put their entitlement attitude on full display and just assumed everyone would play along because their grand move fit their unconventional corporate culture, and they wanted to run everyone else’s faces in their brand of counter-corporate-culture.  Bold move, Zuckerberg, bold move.

http://facebook.retailroadshow.com/  was the link to the IPO commercial, but it is no longer available.  It was up for a couple of days, and then removed entirely from the web universe.  Youtube doesn’t have it, or doesn’t even have an out-of-focus knock-off of it.   Daily Motion doesn’t have a copy.  Google Cache doesn’t even have it.  The commercial was that horrendous, and facebook didn’t realize this beforehand and quickly erased all memory and indication of it from the internets.  Business insider made a shot-by-shot summary of it, and that’s still around, http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-ipo-roadshow-heres-why-facebook-thinks-investors-should-buy-into-its-ipo-2012-5# .  But the still frame version doesn’t do it justice.  It looks accessible in this still-frame version, which is entirely opposite of what it felt like watching it.  If you thought The Social Network made the founder of facebook seem creepy, then you should have seen his glory in this gem of marketing mayhem that will be used in MBA courses for years and years to come as a perfect “what not to do”.  This self-produced commercial made the Zucks seem more like that guy DO from the Hale-Bopp cult, not the youngest billionaire ever.

In the video the young brain trust of facebook goes on to detail the relevance of the company, facebook’s role in every living being’s existence, how important and groundbreaking their social networking interface is, essentially how the world doesn’t function without them (which, I’m finding out now, may actually be true).  Shot with soft lighting, hypnotizing cadences, and soothing background music, it was incredibly captivating.  Like watching the Masters at Augusta.  It’s pretty, it’s pacifying, it deserves your respect, and everything else is so far below their superiority we are all just lucky to behold their greatness.  A tradition unlike any other, or at least this was bucking tradition like no one before them.

When the commercial concluded, I loved that it was creepy.  I enjoyed that it was arrogant.  I appreciated the fact that it was such a colossally horrendous promotion and thought that if they could screw up their Trillion dollar campaign, then that was something that I could not pass up!  I had to get in on that ride, and now’s my chance!  How could I enjoy the inevitable death rattle if I didn’t experience some of the life blood while it was beating at maximum heart rate?  And don’t get me wrong.  There are people who know how to use this medium and do great things, pass along worthwhile messages and knowledge.  There are people who go out of their way to do something bold and awe inspiring and incredible…and then there’s this facebook IPO version, which reaffirmed my preconceived notions of what this socially networked universe is like.  It is presented as an amazing and hyped up version of reality, accentuating greatness and de-emphasizing the clutter and unnecessary pop-ups.  But we all know that’s just a ruse, and that sooner rather than later we’ll be inundated by spam and junk mail and pop-ups and viruses…clutter.  E-clutter.  The show is not nearly as cool as they thought it was, and they clearly don’t realize this.  They obviously didn’t realize how condescending they were being, how empty their self-promotion was and how entirely anti-self-aware the whole facebook experience can be.  Both the Yin and the Yang.  And the video perfectly illustrated this aspect of facebook.

So, after all of that, I’m just like everyone else.  I’m a sheep who loves a train wreck, especially when those driving the train keep going faster.  They know what they’re doing, and they want you to come along for the ride.  Actually they’re asking you to take the wheel for a moment, they want you to participate in the fun, throwing some coal in their fire and all of your self-promotion along with it!  Vanity of Vanities!  I love me some vanity, so I signed up.  I’ve got a few years of virtual narcissism to catch up on.  And with its IPO roadshow, this bandwagon just bought billions more gigabytes of space for me and you other stragglers to jump on.  Like it or not.