Stupid Facebook

            At Thanksgiving dinner this year my family and I were celebrating my Aunt Lisa’s birthday.  We bring in her favorite pie, alight with candles, singing a rousing rendition of happy birthday.  Before she blows out the candles though, Lisa insists on having her picture taken in front of her pie.  She poses with an artificial smile, then looks at the picture on her iPhone, then does a reshoot and looks again, then makes sure that my Uncle uploads it to Facebook immediately, all before blowing out her stinking candles! I swear the candles were stumps by the time she got around to wishing on them. 

While this was happening I looked around and noticed that half of my family was rolling there eyes, and I began to wonder what happened to the good ole days of skipping around the room and birthday punches?  Suddenly everything we do now is for the camera and Facebook.  My Aunt Li is a prime example of someone who has been so manipulated by the sheer existence of social media that she won’t even partake in the oldest of traditions without letting technology interfere.  Facebook dictates our behavior because we know that within seconds, all of our acquaintances (they aren’t all actually your friends are they?) can find out exactly where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and with whom.  Privacy has become as rare an ice cube in the Sahara.  Suddenly our lives have become more about posing for pictures than smiling at a friend, more about funny wall posts than actual conversation. 

In class we talked mostly about how we are manipulated as consumers to buy certain things like Old Spice or room spray, but I believe that social media manipulates us to an even greater extent, by influencing how we think, how we act, and to an degree, who we are.  Ten years ago my aunt smiled over her rum chiffon pie with genuine happiness to be with her family, but this year she smiled because she wanted the world to see and believe how happy she is, and that distinction truly shows the influence of social media.