read this passage that I found in the latest Adbusters magazine:
Now that the thrill of our hyper-connected existence is gone, virtual life has become a depressing daily grind. We toil late into the night, unleashing an endless stream of status updates and tweets in a desperate attempt to keep ourselves relevant, desirable and in. There's an ominous irony in Farmville, a Facebook application that enables users to build and maintain a virtual farm. It's more than a game; it's an allegory. Virtual existence is feudalism for the modern age. Those who hold the information are kings and those of us toiling in the virtual fields are the servile peasantry: selling our souls for the mind-numbing comfort of an online existence.
Social Networking Sites (SSNs) promise limitless, boundless friendship- a phenomenon that should make us happier than ever. But out optimism over connectivity has gradually morphed into cynicism and resentment. It turns out virtual life is less about connectivity than self-branding. SSNs entice us to divulge and update, stroking out fragile egos with filtered ads that utilize our personal information to reap huge profits, as our hundreds of "friends" perpetually rate our online popularity. Paranoid about how we'll be perceived, we spend hour after hour trying to avoid the virtual consequences of being deemed uncool. We have more to worry about than our online acquaintances deleting us after we're tagged in an unflattering photo. Sites like Lamebook, devoted to resposting cliche status updates and socially awkward wall exchanges, humiliate those virtual personas who are unfamiliar with the web's mores and codes.
Bleak, shallow, and repetitive, virtual life seems increasingly less worth living. Users are beginning to realize that it's not leisure, it's work that borders on servitude. But there's a resistance growing among those tired of their virtual subjugation. In response to the electronic world's rising indignation, virtual suicide sites like sepukoo.com and suicidemachine.org have started a countermovement, provoking users to kill their online selves and reclaim their real lives. These programs assist our virtual deaths by hacking into our profiles, completely annihilating our virtual personas and leaving no trace of our former selves behind. It's a social revolt for the online age: a mass uprising that will shatter the virtual hierarchy and restore order to our actual lives.
-Irene Angelopoulos
It's as if I've been waiting for someone to put the words together so I could proclaim them. I actually do use my Facebook a bit for connectivity, but I know exactly the sick syndrome she describes. What exactly are our motivations when we get sucked into spending hours rewording our profile information? It is self-branding. It's exactly that. Naming the powers is the first step to action.
I've been thinking about post-graduation plans, and talking to others about their plans, and...I still don't know anything. I can send hours and hours on websites like Matador and Travellious and WOOFing listings. But I also feel like I shouldn't "waste" my 6-month race period by attempting a journey that I can't earn any money off of. It sounds awful, but I'd rather be unharnessed sooner than later. I'm also fearful that if I enter a farm-to-table chef apprenticeship, I'll be placed in a restaurant and that's where I'll stay. For years.Yes, melodramatic, but not unwarranted. Young people get jobs in a place, meet friends and spouses, and they never end up leaving. So, basically, I still know nothing. But I'm considering teaching English in Japan? Or China? Experience a completely new culture, AND pay off my student loans? Perhaps. Perhaps.
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