fucking computers.

Each morning I roll out of bed with the impetus to make something of my day; take a run through town, read the rest of Ulysses(I’ve been stalled on page 25 for months now), do some much needed laundry, or change the disastrous current political climate one person at a time. As I’m opening my eyes and my room starts to take focus my eyes lead to the grey little box in the corner of my room; the dark corner that holds my addictions. Instantly my big plans for the day begin to fade away and I’m racing over to the computer to check my Facebook home page. I wonder what photos have been added of my friends or who has written on my virtual wall or how many people have responded to my invitation for the party at my house this weekend.

For those of you who have been stuck under a rock (or are over the age of 24) I’ll give you a little background on the phenomenon that is Facebook. Started in February of 2004, Facebook was created by Mark Zuckerberg, a computer programming dork from Harvard (reminiscent of Shawn Fanning from Napster fame) who decided it was time that Harvard had a directory allowing students to connect with each other, a tool to strengthen the Harvard student community. Anyone with a valid Harvard e-mail address could join Facebook. Within a few weeks of creation, almost half the student body at Harvard had registered with Facebook. As popularity of the website spread on the Harvard campus, Zuckerburg expanded Facebook to include other Ivy League schools. Currently 882 colleges and universities are registered under Facebook. To give you an idea of Facebook’s explosive growth, within two years of its launch Facebook has grown to 7.5 million users. 60% of these users log in daily (some hourly). 85% log in at least once a week and 93% at least once a month. Facebook is not only an extremely popular site, but also one in which its members are extremely active (I openly admit this is a euphemism for addicted).

What is it about Facebook that causes it to be so addictive? Facebook, and all social networking sites for that matter, hone in on something almost all of us are interested in, ourselves and our friends. Essentially, Facebook allows each user to relish in the joy of yearbooks; looking at photos, signing yearbook pages, remembering memories and events, but this time it is in the context of the internet in which the “yearbook” is constantly changing and interactive, allowing each user to create and control their own media experiences.

At first glance, Facebook seems strikingly similar to MySpace. Each registered Facebook user creates their own personal profile just as a user would on MySpace. These profiles include the user’s relationship status, activities, quotes, musical interests, summer plans, photo albums, virtual walls and the groups that they belong to. Posts on my virtual wall say things like: “heyyy.howz your summer. Call me soon.” or “hey its joe from 9^th grade English. Seeing how you have been.” (Those are the more generic ones. I’m trying to keep this article PG.) A fabulous feature of Facebook is photo tagging. This feature allows creators of a photo album to “tag” the individuals in each photo. This tag is then directly linked to the individual’s Facebook profile page, allowing users to see an endless amount of photos of an individual person, some taken by the person, but many more taken by others. With 1.5 million photos updated daily Facebook beats out even photo-specific sites likes Flickr to be the number one photo site on the Internet. One photo album can lead you to many more, simply by clicking on an individual’s name. You can begin to understand how the addiction of Facebook breeds.

The most important difference between MySpace and Facebook, and for me, Facebook’s best feature is that profiles are hidden from those that are not your “friends” or those that do not go to your college or high school. In other words, you can surf Facebook profiles, and others can surf yours, with the comforting knowledge that you all belong to a certain community or institution. You can join groups that are titled “Professor Smith is the Devil” or “I’m about to graduate and have no idea what I’m doing with my life.” You can find that attractive member of the opposite sex from your English class and drop them a message or you can organize an event by sending all your friends messages notifying them of events ranging from campus protests to a kegger for Kathy’s 21^st B-day.

The fun features do not stop there. I told a friend recently I had reached the lowest form of human communication; virtual poking. What is this virtual poking exactly? In Facebook any registered user can “poke” a friend. It is not clear if this poking has sexual intentions or not and it doesn’t seem to matter. My friends and I just poke each other just for the absurdity of it. My Facebook homepage notifies that “You have been poked by (insert name). Although I don’t necessarily know what it means I have to admit, it feels good when I wake up to a friendly poke on my Facebook page.

All in all, so many of us are addicted to Facebook because it allows us to escape our real responsibilities; work. One quick walk around the UMass library basement during finals week shows this to be true. I recall last semester walking desperately through lines and lines of computers, praying that someone would sign off so I could print my paper that was due in 15 minutes. About 1 in 8 of the students that were taking up the computers were obsessively staring at their screen, smiling in delight at their Facebook page. Although in this moment I scorned Facebook, moments later, after having printed my paper I became part of my statistic and my addiction continued.