A future without face

ONE WEEK ago, I killed myself! Or rather, my online identity. I deleted my Facebook account. But there is a hitch.
Facebook has given me 14 days to change my mind, before it deletes four years of photos, chats, status line updates, accumulated friends and vampire points.
This window of opportunity to sign on and save my Facebook account has given rise to a feeling akin to beating an addiction. There is a little hum in my head, a voice, that whispers and encourages – sign on, save your information, get back into the swing of things!
It hasn't been easy. A part of me loves Facebook and my cut off from daily perusals of the lives of friends, most of whom I haven't had non-Facebook contact with for many years, has led to inner conflict. Why does this feel like kicking a habit, and why I am doing this to myself?
The whole point of Facebook, after all, is that it is a central meeting place that conveniently keeps you in touch with friends from near and far, gives you a chance to re-connect with long lost friends and even, sometimes, make new ones.
But, despite this, I keep on going back to the fact that a part of my Facebook time is spent looking and listening in on the lives of 'friends' with whom I've shared very little non-facebook time with, and would not go out of my to see face to face.
Could it be that Facebook hints at our collective need as human beings to ensure that we are part of a 'tribe', that we belong, that we are not alone? And, by doing it from a technically isolated place in the real world, at your desk with your computer – you engage with your 'tribe' only in a superficial way, and forget how to do it in real life?
It could even be that Facebook has blurred the idea of friendship and enlarged the proverbial circle of friends, just as gossip magazines have deepened our intimate knowledge of celebrities – people we will never meet, but who are as familiar as close friends.
This is the information age, but for me, Facebook has dramatically shifted the natural boundaries of personal information, making it possible to delude myself into a sense of 'friendship', when in reality, that relationship is based on a carefully selected array of information that we feel comfortable enough to share with others. Real friendship can be messy and force us to deal with issues that come up when human beings forge lasting bonds. Facebook, on the other hand, can create artificial relationships that never require any proper emotional input.
A close 'friend' (well, our communication is limited to g-talk) had this to say when I told him about my decision.
“Why the f … ck would you want to do that? You lose a massive part of the current human experience. You lose touch with folks you know or have known who now have no route to find you. You stop taking part in the common cultural dialogue.”
My friend might have a point. And that could be the reason I am struggling to wean myself off Facebook. It is the thought that I'm cutting myself off from the positive benefits of technological advancement and that I am quite probably romanticising an old-fashioned idea of a close-knit circle of 'real' friends.
To me, the massive cultural evolution that is Facebook or Twitter or the like, has created a new sphere of human interaction – but is it real or false?
We possess unprecedented amounts of information on mere acquaintances, on movie and rocks stars and Facebook friends, that to a degree, subtracts from the real meaning of friendship.
Facebook and similar sites broaden the injection of intimate details of others into our own lives, while at the same time pushing out the old fashioned mechanisms and need to create real friendship.
Another friend, who lives in Britain but with whom I shared a close friendship while we were both living in Cape Town, and whose life I have been able to track to a degree via Facebook, also disagrees with me.
“As a discerning Facebook user, I point out that it is possible to in fact say no. No, you are not going to be my friend, random person I last saw in Grade 11. And, if I must say yes after all, I can block you from seeing anything at all, that I don't want you to see (person at work I do not trust completely).”
He added that the fact that “we have become lazy” makes Facebook useful. “Log on only once, instead of picking up the phone five times. Which is great, but also a bit sad. But if we are keeping in touch, and that means, in touch with the people we really want to and should and more so care about, why not through Facebook?”
I guess I could choose to ignore the automatic trap that Facebook places in front of me – the trap of immersing myself in an ocean of 'friends', and limiting my acceptance of them. Honestly though, who can resist the temptation? Where is the line in which you decide not to accept a friend? Can you? Do you? I am uncomfortable with this particular apple on the Facebook tree.
Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the evolving technological wonders just as much as anyone. I am a little too fond of my TV, I write emails and I adore my laptop. I couldn't, and wouldn't, wish for a day without my cellphone. I love Skype, and its face to face time afforded to me on cheap broadband.
And yet Facebook makes me feel torn about a revolution of co-dependent voyeurism, which, if we are not careful, can cost us valuable emotional ties that create meaning and struggles needed for our growth.
Will I make it through 14 days of being 'faceless'? Who knows? I can change my mind, and decide to return to it, creating a more select group of online friends - ones I am sure to want to have a drink with in real life. After all this thinking about Facebook, I am ready to re-define my use of it, in order to make it work for me instead of exposing myself to its potential of acting like a global-suburban gossip magazine.
There is another voice in my head though. It teases me with the thought that I will be okay without Facebook, that friends will continue to locate me without exact directions on Facebook, that I'll still be in the loop and know what is going on in my friends lives, without a little help from this social network.
And anyway, I could never post this long an opinion on my status line – it by far succeeds the 300 character limit ...