Facebook news(forced)feed

I’m really amused by the facebook news feed. I haven’t turned mine off yet. I might, because I’m not entirely friends with all the people I am listed as friends with, but if I was a really, really extroverted, I might like having everyone know, every time some facet of my life changed. It seems like a system that should work. As long as privacy filters can be set, I get to know exactly what is going on in all of my friends’ lives without ever actually having to communicate with them. Okay, that’s a little creepy. But nice nonetheless. The facebook newsfeed was created under the silly assumption that people actually cared about the people that they are ‘friends’ with. Unfortunately, a facebook ‘friend’ is really more like ‘an acquaintance that I spoke to at one point, and did not immediately detest,’ which is how people end up with 150 friends. Facebook was doing its best to make the community more efficient at what it does, but they failed to take into account that people are basically shallow and don’t care that much about anyone but themselves, and facebook is a place for people to stroke their petty vanities by listing their whole lives, and thinking that people are interested in the petty inanities of their lives, while also offering them a voyeur’s peek into the lives of other people. The difference between what the news feed does, and what people already did is miniscule. First, it was too much too fast, and people felt like they were being force fed way more info than they really wanted, but the biggest problem is the second one. Facebook also set the newsfeed so that you saw everything about all of your friends, but most people really only want to peek in on the lives of a select few people. People they admire, people they desire. And the information that they want about them isn’t so unlimited. Say for example, if you could set the newsfeed to tell you when someone’s relationship status changed, but to leave out information about changes to the favorites list, and to only tell you when one of your friends gets a new friend, only when you are friends with both parties. I suspect that most people would only set relationship changes, and maybe picture updates. That’s usually all people get out of facebook. The entire website seems a bit superfluous. No one ever really reads what other people put in their Favorites and about me lists. They use it to look up people they think are hot, see who is in their classes, and to have a place to talk to other people, which is strangest of all, since it isn’t like we lack for ways to communicate. The wall is like resurrecting the voice mail machine. The wall says ‘You’re not online right now, but I have something I want to say to you that won’t wait very long because it is usually an inane way to get your attention, so I’ll right it here, and you can read it when you return to your computer.

Movies as a tragic modern non-experience

If paintings could talk, what would the Mona Lisa say? If paintings could move, where would the screamer go? If poems could jump off the page, and make noise, what sounds would poems sing? Do you know what a poem would be, if its words were pictures, and its noises real. It would be a movie.

Movies are the tragic, belittled media of art. When great paintings get old, they are loved and displayed in museums. When cherished poems age, they go to anthologies. What about great movies? What about Woody Allen’s Manhattan, and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket? In their own way, these movies displayed the same depth as any poem, and drew out as much emotion as many paintings. They have characters who represent deep, insightful metaphors. They show change, and pain, and love. Film has the ability to be a more powerful media than any before it because it lets paintings move, and poems speak. Film is no longer really an art though and there are two reasons why.

In the modern day, films are not art; films are entertainment. As if art should not entertain. The films that make money are not the artful poetic films that inspire thought. The films that make money are the films where things blow up. People don’t see films as a form of art, and that is true even for most of the people who make films. To most film producers, films are things that make people pay money for a few hours of entertainment. And that’s not that bad. What’s bad is the fact that what people are paying to see is not art. Why bother paying for movies that have art, when all people really want are explosions? The thing is, people don’t want to think. Most people are happy to sit on their couches and chew their cud. If people demanded a higher level of entertainment, then producers will produce a higher level of entertainment. History tells us of the ancient Greek cities where men and women both attended lectures in their leisure time because they took joy in learning. People don’t go to lectures anymore. They go to movies that have no message at all, and search for none if they are silly enough to see movies that do.

That is the second reason films are not artwork anymore. We as viewers don’t let them be artwork. How can we expect artists to keep making art, if we are never able to value their art for what it is. Artists too know why people view their artwork. It’s not for what they can draw out of their artwork. It’s for cheap thrills. It’s for a good excuse to make out with their date. When was the last time you sat in a movie, and thought that the main character was portraying a good image for innocence corrupted in the name of good? I wish we could all make a more concerted effort to learn from the life around us.

The world we see in movies does not necessarily have to be less full of lessons because it is fantastic either. Movies rarely portray absolutely normal daily life. A movie without climax, and without tension is boring. I was in a movie a few weeks ago. It was a comedy about college, and it hit me that what gave the movie its lightheartedness was that this movie showed what everyone wanted in college. The movie was funny, but it also showed us that college as a place where the lectures are boring, and the parties are the wild parts is what we come to expect. Whatever happened to the time when people took classes because they were interested in them, and had as much fun in class as at parties? Well maybe that’s just a pipe dream, but I’m sorry if it is.

(not yet finished)

(learning is best done when we put people in stressful situations, learn by fire)

Currently Listening Hours By Funeral for a Friend see related

It’s too damn easy to tell someone you love them on the phone. It’s easy to love someone from 800 miles away. It’s convenient. You can call them when you really need them, but you don’t have to deal with them when you don’t have time. All you have to see is the stuff you want to. You can even pine for them when you feel like missing them, but you don’t have to worry about them when you are eyeing some other girl. They are out of reach, which makes them so much more desirable. Even telling them that you love them isn’t a risk, because you can’t see their face. You don’t have to worry about whether or not the words have any impact. You don’t have to be afraid of bearing your heart to someone if you can forget about them at any time. You don’t have to worry about much of anything. That’s not love.

It is very nice. It’s nice to talk. It’s not enough. Every time I hear her voice, I want to hold her in my arms again. Every time I hear her laugh, I want to kiss her. Every time she says I am being cute, I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her how much I love her. And I can’t do any of it. I get away without the risk of being spurned because I can forget about her, but I have to worry about whether or not she will get bored and forget about me. It doesn’t seem like a fair tradeoff to me. I don’t think I want to run the risk, but I don’t want the fear either. That’s just a childish fantasy though. You can’t have the benefit without the risk.

That right there shows that I have no business being in any kind of serious relationship. I’m so not ready for one. I am young, and irresponsible, and very, very unfaithful. There’s no way I could concentrate on just one girl. That’s just not me. She doesn’t expect that of me but still…I feel like I owe it to her.

And how unfair is that anyways? ‘I love you, but I can’t see you until November.’ She deserves better than me. Maybe I should stop tying her down. I know she sees other boys. We talk about them, but maybe if I just forgot about her, she could find another boy to be serious with, instead of having to deal with a whole bunch of superficial relationships. She deserves better than that. She deserves better than me. It would hurt her less if I just moved on.

I don’t want to move on though. I guess I am being selfish, but what I want is her. We always want more than we can ever have…and that’s when we know what we want.

I love you, kiddo. I’m sorry.