Matt Lettieri is writing an article
Matthew Lettieri
Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: Opinion
Allow me to issue a brief disclaimer before I say anything else in this article: I am an extreme hypocrite. There, it's out there, once and for all. It's true that from time to time I engage in some of the activities I'm about to ridicule. But the fact that I do these things doesn't eliminate the need for someone to say how stupid they can be. Yes, I'm taking the burden upon myself to speak out against an unstoppable force that is ruing the social interaction of our generation: Facebook. Or, as my grandpa once called it, Spacebook (obviously, a merger between Facebook and its cyber-interactive predecessor, Myspace).
Here's how you know Facebook has reached much too lofty a position in society: it's one of those nouns that has attained verb-status. You know, like when someone says, "I'm going to water the plants." Water is a noun that we've also changed into a verb. It's so vital to our existence that one part of speech just isn't enough. Well, Facebook is the same way. We used to simply write on each other's Facebook walls. Now, we Facebook each other.
Amid this age of rapidly expanding technology, I wonder which form of communication will undergo the noun to verb transformation next. I predict that in the next year we'll be "iPoding" each other. Or is that already happening? Let's just make it easy on ourselves and start "braining" each other. That's my term for telepathic communication. "Hey, just brain me when you know what we're doing on Friday." Catchy, right?
(This isn't as unrealistic as it seems. I recently read an article about a biomedical engineering student who developed a contraption allowing him to post messages to Twitter by simply thinking them. No joke. Cyber communication is about to be taken to a whole new level.)
Pictures are another clue as to how important Facebook has become in our everyday lives. We don't take pictures anymore to preserve memories, or to capture a special moment, or because we're seeing something we've never seen before. No, we take pictures to put them on Facebook. What's the first thing people say after taking an especially noteworthy or outrageous picture? "That's going on Facebook." And then, of course, comes the whole argument of tagging and untagging. It's as if we think that if we do something idiotic or embarrassing in a picture, but then untag ourselves from the picture on Facebook, we're erasing that moment from existence. Then again, maybe we are if our existence is validated by Facebook.
Here's how you know Facebook has reached much too lofty a position in society: it's one of those nouns that has attained verb-status. You know, like when someone says, "I'm going to water the plants." Water is a noun that we've also changed into a verb. It's so vital to our existence that one part of speech just isn't enough. Well, Facebook is the same way. We used to simply write on each other's Facebook walls. Now, we Facebook each other.
Amid this age of rapidly expanding technology, I wonder which form of communication will undergo the noun to verb transformation next. I predict that in the next year we'll be "iPoding" each other. Or is that already happening? Let's just make it easy on ourselves and start "braining" each other. That's my term for telepathic communication. "Hey, just brain me when you know what we're doing on Friday." Catchy, right?
(This isn't as unrealistic as it seems. I recently read an article about a biomedical engineering student who developed a contraption allowing him to post messages to Twitter by simply thinking them. No joke. Cyber communication is about to be taken to a whole new level.)
Pictures are another clue as to how important Facebook has become in our everyday lives. We don't take pictures anymore to preserve memories, or to capture a special moment, or because we're seeing something we've never seen before. No, we take pictures to put them on Facebook. What's the first thing people say after taking an especially noteworthy or outrageous picture? "That's going on Facebook." And then, of course, comes the whole argument of tagging and untagging. It's as if we think that if we do something idiotic or embarrassing in a picture, but then untag ourselves from the picture on Facebook, we're erasing that moment from existence. Then again, maybe we are if our existence is validated by Facebook.
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