Finding a Life Manual

Facebook is all too often your past life...not your present and other shortcomings

I’ve been using Facebook for years and will keep doing so.
During this long journey as a Facebook user, I realized some very interesting facts

• History Book: The biggest use of Facebook is to connect with people who ‘mattered’ to you most in the past rather than who actually matters right now. e.g. 90% of people on my Facebook are the ones with whom I was associated in the past. Facebook’s desire to digitize all the relationships in the world makes you connect with everyone you ever interacted in the real world. Most of them becomes part of your past as you move along in your life. Now, when you’re on Facebook you are mostly living in the past.
• Waste of Time: As you keep interacting with people in the past life, you keep spending your time. This is where you are living your past life rather than the present life. Once, you come back to the present, you realize that you spent a lot of time on the ‘past’ with people who mattered once upon a time. None of the interaction or conversation is really useful right now. This happens often.
• Source of Guilt: Now you realize the two facts above and you keep doing the same thing time and again. You get used to living in past and coming back to present. This results into a consistent source of Guilt.
• Private to public usage: Initially when you join Facebook, you’re connected to most close friends. Now, Facebook pushes you to add more people that you may know. Facebook keep suggesting to you to the point you give up and you end up adding everyone you ever interacted in real life. Now, your friend list is not private anymore. Everything is public. Facebook didn’t do it, It made you do it. Whose fault?
• Makes you a Creep: More and more of your friends keep sharing their pictures, private photos and travel etc. Now, It becomes your innate desire to check ALL the stuff out. There is nothing bad about checking it out - Just that you are now spending so much of time doing what can be considered creepy.

• Makes you Less Social: This might sound confusing, but If you really dig deeper there are some facts about being social - A phone call is always more social than Facebook sharing or online chat. Facebook can’t get closer to meeting friends face to face. More you start doing Facebook, less time you spend with your current friends. Your life of past becomes an obsession and now you are way less social in real life.
• It’s Not Real: Whatever you do on Facebook, doesn’t impact the bottom line or top line of your current life. All you do is kill some time and feel guilty about doing so. You also feel guilty about losing your productivity.