Displays of public abnormality

I’ve done something socially abhorrent: I’ve quit Facebook and without telling most of my ‘friends’. I can hear you asking me why so I’ll do the decent thing and answer.

There’s a point where my resilience to people, their dumb-ass attitudes, bigotry and constant negation of my feelings stops, even though I try to remain mindful that compassion extends to all. Including those who resemble parasites under the skin.

I doubt that there are many individuals (asides from the raging masochist but I reckon even they would get sick of it after a while) who would continue to expose themselves to a constant barrage of negativity and ill-will. Perhaps some of you would recommend that I stop taking it so seriously? I’d say that’s rather apathetic and completely against the spirit of community.

Social networking is great for smiling and connecting with friends and sharing the good times with hilarious photos, even for raising awareness; until people start bashing their views into cyber-space like they’re the only one with a valid opinion, photos you don’t want on public view start cropping up and friends constantly fail at the ‘friend’ part despite being able to fulfil it for their other 3,864 mates.

(Disclosure: I have to admit that I’m a little sad to know that I’m going to lose touch with some people but then if either of us truly cared, we’d make the effort and email one another.)

I could have simply removed all of the individuals who have made me lose faith in the human species for the billionth time but I’d not be able to remove the ads and the constant demand that I connect with people I don’t know. See previous rant.

Again there’s only so much resilience I have when being force-fed crap I don’t want to know about, look at, participate in, connect with or listen to. Go away and let me discover things for myself; let me make my own decisions; all is mind-control.

Facebook is a fine example which aptly illustrates my belief that humans aren’t social creatures. On a large-scale anyway. Pocket communities that are interconnected but remain independent of an enormous whole, fine; massive social movements en masse? Not cool. A lot gets done but a lot also goes terribly wrong.

Can you blame me for having had enough?

***

In other news, I’m constantly thinking about the PhD in The Contemporary Novel offered by the University of Kent. The odds of me getting funding are so slim that if Chance and Luck were physically manifested as deities, they’d be suffering from intestinal parasites and instantly landed with modelling contracts.

I’m relatively optimistic. Note the relative part.

Asides from dreaming up my research area and slowly teasing an idea for the novel out of the fog that is my imagination, I’ve been contemplating the notion of there being a genuine opportunity for me to get the cash I’d need to do this.

Would a charity fund me? I would have thought that being a disabled student might open some supportive doors for me but I’m yet to find anything. Research councils, public bodies, employment grants, university grants. They’re my options.

But there is a problem: the Guvmint is running around with a giant switch-blade (which are illegal, ironically…) which means that getting funding in this atmosphere has just become highly fashionable.

Even if there was a charity out there willing to support someone who lives openly with mental health problems and are committed to dispelling the ignorance currently choking any chances of mental health being understood, I would have to be something very, very special indeed. My writing would have to be a revelation.

Whilst I have no doubts that I could bring my writings to a decent standard with a bit of elbow grease, I’m ever-the-cynic when it comes to believing that I’m special, gifted, talented – whatever. That’s not self-depreciation by the way, I just don’t think I’m that fabulous. I’m good but not cut out for celebrity.

The same concern arises when I think about being accepted onto the PhD itself; am I good enough? Are my ideas, even in their infancy, original? Can they be developed tightly? Is the research I’d produce unique and would it create new pathways for the academic world? Would the novel be engaging? Would it open eyes and encourage independent, rebellious thought – something I think we really need at the moment.

If I can answer ‘yes’ to even half of those questions and survive the dozens of other swimming around in my head, maybe I could survive a PhD.

I desire it greatly. Not for the extra letters added to my name, not for the money from the funding, not even for the fact that I’d be staying on in my favourite institution.

I desire it for the knowledge. To have free reign over what I’d research, to be able to dream and create on this level would be devouring. And I’d not only write my already forming ideas, I’d practice them too.

I’ve already started doing it…

People you may know

I must be really uptight because the slightest thing makes me chew on my bottom lip. At this rate, I’m due to look like Two-Face from ‘The Dark Knight’ within the week.

This niggle has been brewing for some time and I’ve so far been able to resist articulating what is about to be burnt into the memory of the poor soul who reads this. Yes. That’s you.

Facebook. Not the first blog-oriented vent concerning this wonderful medium of perpetual irresponsibility. But I’m not here to argue about the morality of a website that innocently sucks your day away through your eyeballs. Immanuel Kant does the same thing.

No, I’m writing about this thing, this beast with all its little pleasures hanging like bells from the belt of my fantasy nude because it continues to insist that I be sociable.

What do you use FB for? Chatting? Uploading photos? Feeling compelled to continue the diseased chain of chain notes? Spending good yet boring working hours playing the infectious and entirely worthwhile MouseHunt?

Telling the world who you are, how you feel, what you’re doing, where you are, how much you hate the guy who sat in front of you on the bus today, how annoying it was to have the best orgasm you’ve experienced in months being interrupted by a telemarketing company trying to con you into changing your gas supply when you live on a boat and have no gas line? Sure, I do those things.

But. I do them on my own.

My previous annoyance with FB was when I declined the offer of my privacy being invaded by someone I hardly know and had to put up with being asked several more times before the said someone managed to put their brain cells together and figured out I didn’t want to know. This time, my gripe is with FB telling me that there are people I may know… Really? How queer…

People you may know. Let’s pick this apart:

1. People; very good, we’ve established that the things we may know are something physical and bear a resemblance to us. Although results are going to vary. Drastically. For me, this is where it starts to fall apart slightly.

I don’t really like people; I like the odd individual I meet and get on with and have a laugh with, can work with and trust etc. but I do not like people. Why? Because I don’t trust The Collective. You think The Borg had problems with Captain Janeway? Try poking a Drone in the eye and see what happens; each digit is different and has multiple variations and combinations, and are subject to the random actions of a panicked individual. I’d like to see them adapt to that.

So FB is losing already by mentioning people. People? Well there goes my cognitive skills, my libido and generally, my will to live.

2. You; who me? Why are you addressing me? Do I know you? How did you get this number? STOP STALKING ME!!!! Don’t make me make the effort to go upstairs, grind some peppercorns and throw them at you.

3. May; I always think that when FB says this bit, it cringes as if to say ‘sorry, but in all likelihood you don’t know this person and by thinking that you do, you’re gonna message them, speak to them for like five minutes, make a complete tit of yourself and then never speak again’.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of uncertainty in my life, it keeps me on my toes, but ‘may’ isn’t uncertainty in this case. It’s stupidity. If you know them and like them, they’d be on your contacts already.

4. Know; I don’t know anyone. I only see and try to understand, and feel connections with someone I like. I wouldn’t want to ‘know’ someone anyway – where’s the fun? Where’s the potential in knowing that in three months time, this individual is going to hate me because I’m so analytical and find it hard to think/talk/breathe anything but the things that irritate me and their philosophical implications?

If I knew that the girl I decided to develop a friendship with last week would end up being the one I spend the rest of my life with, why the hell bother meeting, talking to and eventually hating anyone at all?

So. People I may know. I find it patronising. And the premise on which FB bases its assumption that I may know these people? We went to the same university. Bravo… braaaaaavo.

There’s something else too. What makes FB think I want to know these people? Is it not obvious that I’m antisocial, selective and cynical over everything? And this is where it starts to get annoying.

The whole assumption that I may want to know these people nestles itself smugly on the right side of my screen three times a day, displaying all of the wonderful people I may know who I don’t know, have never seen, have never heard of, never even knew existed, only to have to spend several minutes trying to get rid of the box containing the reminder of my bitterness by removing each and every one of those names I don’t recognise; you can’t turn it off. The repeated attempts at trying to get me to submit reminds me of a lazy-eyed klutz with a wonky grin and a runny nose, trying to give me a leaflet about something I don’t really care about.

Kudos for the perseverance of leaflet droppers; I used to be one myself. Kudos to FB for trying to spoon feed me more humiliating attempts at friendship. But please. Take the hint:

I say no everyday, click politely, refuse with a bow. Now sodd off before I get nasty.

Uno…

Today I hoped that I’d be able to get my wage slip from work. To my utter horror (and nagging paranoia about the flimsy slip sitting in it’s metal box with all the other flimsy slips in the cash office), I discovered that the wage slips hadn’t been delivered.

This one small hiccup in my day has brought about a rather delicious dose of insomnia. And the opportunity to get a few things off my chest…

Facebook. We all love it. I find myself loving it. Its something to waste my time on when I know I should be wasting it on something else. Like staring at the dust on my monitor and thinking ‘I should clean that’.

I can cope with the obsessive need to update my ‘virtual’ status as soon as my actual status changes, even if I do have to be psychotically third person to do so. I can cope with the need to see the state my friends are in, and spy on their ‘wall-to-wall’ just so that I can understand their conversation, half plastered across the screen in disjointed blurbs that tease with a very sexy ‘…’ when they’ve gone on for too long.

That I can deal with.

Friends requests. I’ve had a few now (amazingly), most of which I’ve accepted because I obviously like them. But don’t you feel dirty when you click ‘Ignore’?

I feel repulsive. And for good reason.

I click ‘Ignore’ because I don’t want to know them. Now, or ever. So why do they then ask again? There is one very effective way Facebook could remedy this.

Invent a ‘Sod off’ button.

I’m still thinking about that wage slip…