A familiar feeling for many Facebook users will be the anxious boredom that comes with mindlessly scrolling through the news feed. Always looking for more, we descend ever deeper into a white and blue world of smiling acquaintances and the carefully crafted facade they share. None of this is ever satisfying. Oftentimes, we will hit “the bottom,” which is really just where we begin to see repeats of earlier postings. After that, something interesting happens. We close Facebook. But to our somewhat indifferent horror, within a few minutes of checking out some other websites, many of us head straight back to resume our scrolling. We acknowledge that this is silly, but it doesn’t stop us from doing it. Some of us have been doing it for years. And for most people, going on Facebook is seldom an uplifting experience. If anything, the website that has come to dominate our lives tends to inspire feelings of unfulfilment at best, and self-loathing at worst.

I believe that these feelings arise from the nature of the website itself. Its users are compelled to make constant microcomparisons with every bit of content posted on the site. The combination of news feed and mini live-feed gives an impression of constant change and activity in the lives of a person’s so called ‘friends’. This impression drives us to replicate this veneer of excitement and achievement; and to showcase our most private memories and anecdotes for the world to see. But it is crucial to recognize that this desire to lay bare one’s life does not come from a healthy place: it stems from feelings of unworthiness and insecurities, rather than a genuine will to assuming the qualities we project.

And still, the Facebook’s positive feedback loop, materialized in the forms of likes, comments, etc. keeps us hooked. We unwillingly become performers, committed to entertaining our extended social circle at all costs. And so, even as we sit alone in our darkened bedrooms, we experience ourselves as being watched. The pale blue glow of a computer screen becomes our limelight. With the infinite eyes of Facebook upon us, we make sure not to slip. We carefully select which photos, links and anecdotes to share and leave out. As we become increasingly adept at curating our ‘personal museums’, we come to develop a persona that is an idealized version of ourselves - perfection through omission.

However, this endeavour to monopolize the attention-market soon becomes exhausting and even alienating. Any ‘accomplishment’ on Facebook is quickly drowned out by the never-ending march of the news feed. Yet the performance must continue, or else we risk drifting into the periphery of the spotlight, slowly losing relevance. At the same time, one is surrounded by a maelstrom of our friends’ posts and photos, themselves vying for virtual recognition. The temptation to draw comparisons with our social circle inevitably becomes a compulsion. We become engulfed by a crowd of seemingly perfect people, which makes the reality of our own imperfect lives seem all the more difficult and painful.

Ultimately, it is the deceitful nature of our own profiles that causes us to believe the veneer of perfection and happiness that our friends craft for themselves. The only way to reconcile this is by engaging in a sort of doublethink, in which one intellectually knows that a Facebook profile does not truly reflect a persona, while emotionally believing our friends’ lives to be as incredible as what they project. Every user of Facebook must engage in this act of bad faith, a self-lie that happens in the unity of the mind, in order for the system to function the way it does.

This constant comparison and self-deception commits a Facebook user to a series of self-destructive contradictions. We engage with a community full of people, always watched and evaluated, and yet from this intricate connectedness springs forth feelings of isolation and loneliness. We only post material that makes us look good, all the while feeling inadequate. We begin to see ourselves as profoundly flawed, but can’t quite believe that our friends are struggling just as much as we are. This is where the heart of the problem lies: intimidated by the apparent universal perfection of the community around us, we tend to retreat towards an artificial, self-constructed reality.

I’m not suggesting a call-to-arms against Zuckerberg, nor am I a technophobe urging people to “unplug” and never use a computer or phone as long as they live. Facebook is an extremely useful tool for organizing groups of people, be it for the purpose of a fundraiser or drunken rager; and more generally to keep in touch with people around the globe. More disturbingly, our own insecurities are the only real culprits for Facebook’s darker side: the social media giant is merely responding to a pandemic demand for societal recognition. But It’s important that we keep in mind that the nature of the website will often exacerbate feelings of low self-esteem or dissatisfaction, and that looking through a travel or party album can only give the idealized fantasy of its creator, and has no relation to what actually happened.

Facebook is a giant web of complacent lies, for which we are collectively responsible. The only real danger comes when one becomes convinced that we are seeing the truth.

WRITTEN BY JOHN SAIGLE

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