Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Tautology



A good friend of mine has been talking about the absurdity of facebook. I am one of those people who spends the working day in front of a computer, so I have a web browser tab constantly open to facebook. I check facebook (and my e-mail) obsessively. So, I regularly post photos and silly one liners. I post comics I find funny. I play scrabble with my mom(#). I farm a fairy tale land in which animals never get sick or die from lack of food, there is no mud or manure, and the crops are always healthy. I peep into my friends lives without them knowing about it. And I peep into lives of people I knew in high school. These people are very nice, but we are vastly different, and they probably don't enjoy my "I support same sex marriage" posts. On the other hand, I really do enjoy seeing what everyone is up to on a daily basis. It's such a strange and false world, but I'm completely wrapped up in it.

Tautology is a word I learned today thanks to the XKCD comic strip. I laughed really hard when I read this strip, and I immediately thought of facebook. Facebook is an exercise in tautology for me. Instead of experiencing and living life, I'm unnecessarily repeating it on facebook, rendering myself redundant. It's almost as if I'm attempting to reduce my life to my profile page on facebook. I have my interactions there rather than through e-mail or phone calls...or heaven forbid face-to-face.

So, I've decided to break free of my bad habits this lenten season. This is the first time I've decided to make multiple changes as I usually focus on a single habit. Each habit I've chosen to drop this year is something I classify as a distraction and/or something that inhibits me from experiencing people, books, foods, and events (i.e. life). So, it's a big challenge, but just like with any addiction, I will take it one day at a time.

And funny how I've been meaning to post on my blog for months, but the day I decide to take a break from facebook and farmville, I return to my blog.

So, raise your glass and let's toast to my debut into society and, hopefully, the return of tangible interactions with the people of the world(*)!




(#) I love playing scrabble online, and this is one habit I'm not giving up for now.
(*) Yes, I get the irony of declaring this on the blogosphere. :D

3 comments:

Patrick said...

Does this mean I should be expecting a phone call?

YogaNerd said...

psssshaw......maybe. :D

Velocigoose said...

real life is scary... that's all I'm sayin. (also, great blog.. I'm sayin that, too.)