D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
September 2009
Antisocial Networking
Lightcap is all a-Twitter over Facebook.
A hundred years ago, when the United States still had the good sense to exclude New Mexico from the empire, social opportunities required far more exertion than it was generally worth. A horse or wheezy Model T required hours, even days, getting folks to areas where they could intermingle with other people and swap gossip, drink and engage in fisticuffs. Since telephone service was still newfangled and unreliable, and letters were lost by indifferent postal employees or eaten by snakes, those seeking social activity were forced to spend time with family members.
Thankfully, technology has come to the rescue yet again. The latest tool to facilitate our social tendencies comes from the same place that you'll find online shopping, urban myths and free pornography — the Internet, which now features Facebook, the latest thing in digitized socialization!
Frankly, I don't know what to make of this accelerating trend of obligatory social interaction. First it was cell phones and e-mail, then texting and Twittering and blogging and Facebook, a web site that lets you tell all the people you have spent the last few decades trying to avoid exactly what you've been doing.
When I first heard about Facebook, I wasn't too excited. What compels people to publicize the most mundane aspects of their life and expect people to be interested? Who needs validation so badly that they have to tell the world that they are doing laundry today and hope to grill some chicken for dinner?
Turns out about 250 million people and counting. Facebook has proven wildly popular for people to find old friends, stay in touch with family, and share the most insipid photos and facts with the entire planet.
As impressive as this social-networking juggernaut has become, I had maintained my cool, aloof Lightcap manner whenever the topic came up.
People actually ask in polite conversation, "Do you have a Facebook page?" When I shake my head no, I am treated as something of a social pariah, a sensation not all that unfamiliar to me. I am an outcast, a bizarre holdout in a new era of instant social gratification, but I have my reasons for being recalcitrant.
A big part of the Facebook phenomenon is the ability of people to "find" you, and request to be added to your list of friends. This behavior used to be called "stalking," but times have changed. This seems like a bully idea until you are petitioned to be a friend of that weird guy from eighth grade who used to eat glue and call himself Wally when his name was actually Leonard. Of course, you have the option of not accepting his request, which only makes you look like a jerk and further tempts sociopaths to hunt you down and kill you. It's easier to just accept quasi-friends like Wally-Leonard and learn to deal with random posts about zombie raccoons or 9-11 conspiracy theories.
I've seen other people create Facebook accounts and invest hours in maintaining, updating and checking on their web site. It seems like a kind of social Pavlovian response — when an e-mail alert is received, the person must attend to online engagements quickly for fear of being perceived as rude or inattentive. In a wonderfully dramatic flair, people on Facebook even have the ability to vote a friend off the island, so to speak, and block those more offensive associates from their page. Friendship, acceptance, castigation, betrayal — these are the days of our lives!
Fueled by the fire of a quartet of Coronas one night, I furiously tickled my keyboard and put up my own Facebook page. It's there right now, online for the entire planet to view. I have even thrown up a volume of photos I have taken of my sweet, sun-cracked desert stomping grounds. As of this writing, I have a vast community of something like three friends, all of whom I have great affection for, but it seems a bit pathetic for someone of my advanced savoir-faire.
So I hereby invite you, faithful reader, to search out "Henry Lightcap" and populate my sad, lonely little universe. I promise to be fair and leave everything up, even anti-Henry rants if need be. The only things that can get you booted off Henry's island are bad manners and not replacing beer in the fridge.
The pundits have coined the phrase "social media" for Facebook and Twitter and all the new ways we have to digitally keep in touch. (Any similarities to the phrase "social disease" are, I assume, wholly unintended.) I have eschewed adopting burdensome obligations as much as possible in my life, and that includes joining clubs, talking to homeless people and engaging in extraneous social activity. But things do tend to get a mite quiet here at the Lightcap Family Bunker at times, and a bit of digital palaver might prove to be a welcome distraction.
Although there are a few Henry Lightcaps on Facebook (pikers!), there's only one with a mysterious visage and a cowboy hat. Come join me as I bring salty old-time Waddie conservatism to Facebook — and please, be my friend.
That is, unless a weirdo like Wally-Leonard is reading this, in which case all bets are off.
Henry Lightcap logs on from Las Cruces.