Another Anti-Facebook Rant

I think Facebook, the internet in general, cell phones, iPods and personal technology of all sorts can act as an opiate for our loneliness.

I take the bus nearly every day and every time I do, just about every single person on that bus has an iPod playing or a cell phone in hand. Heck, on at least a weekly basis, while on or waiting for the bus, I take my cell phone out and play with the settings just so that I can distract myself from whatever is going on around me. If I don't feel busy, I'll remember I'm sitting there alone and if I'm sitting there alone there's a good chance I'll start to feel lonely.

Personally, I don't like to acknowledge my own loneliness because I pride myself on being an introvert and introverts are supposed to love their alone time. I have also embraced the idea that silence is golden, and I find people who incessantly talk for the sake of talking and don't seem to ever actually say anything of any substance at all to be very annoying. My roommate, another adherent to the idea that silence is golden, is also a very quiet person and we spent hours living together in total silence. And, I really like the idea of being perfectly capable of entertaining myself, thank you very much. I pride myself on not being an attention whore

In other words, I interpreted loneliness as weakness, even ungodliness, because, you know, "all you need is God."

So I think instead of acknowledging my loneliness, I stuffed much of my alone time with opiates, especially Facebook. Now that Facebook is gone, I'm even resorting to other opiates. I've watched more TV this past week than the whole last semester combined I'm sure.

But maybe loneliness is God-given.

Maybe we're supposed to feel empty when not connecting with anyone else for the 6th hour straight. Maybe that shouldn't be something remedied by personal technology. Maybe its because its hard to actively love people when you spend most of your time alone, in your own little world, thinking to yourself as you go about your day quietly. And we are, after all, called to actively love people.

So maybe for me that means talking more, even if I don't have anything particularly profound, witty or funny to say. Maybe sharing mediocre stories and thoughts with my roommate or the guy beside me on the bus is okay too. And maybe when I feel lonely because I truly am physically alone I should call someone. Because, judging by the amount of time most people complain they waste on Facebook, I bet a lot of people aren't actually as busy as I think they are.

Anyway, these are the thoughts that have been formulating in my head these last couple of days. Ironically, I'm using this blog right now as an opiate, because I really was feeling down for being completely alone for the 6th hour straight. And now I do feel a little better. But then again it is 1:17am and I should probably have gone to bed rather than sit around feeling lonely or taking the time to type this out. But I really did need to clear my head before going to sleep. So this has been good. Or maybe I just should have called someone in a different time zone. But whatever. GOOD NIGHT!