Vice, or Facebook

Another creative nonfiction, this time about me and social networking in the form of Facebook.

Facebook has me by the ankles.

Like any other vice, it started slowly. Insinuatingly. Slipping through the tiny gaps. Before I realized it, a permanent addition to the open tabs on my web browser had seemingly added itself.

"It can't hurt to get started on here, right?" Facebook murmured gently into my ear, a year ago today. "It's just a tool to help you keep track of people. Just something to keep you caught up with them without actually having to talk to them all the time. Easy, right? Simple.

"Sure, you should add your classmate as a friend," it whispered months ago, silkily as snake oil salesmen, slipping rohypnol into my Red Bull. "What if you have questions on what was covered in class that day? Or what if she needs your notes for something? It's simply practical is all."

"Why not take that quiz your 5th grade classmate tagged your for? It could be fun, and anyway it won't take but a few minutes." Facebook encouraged me, like a drug dealer from those D.A.R.E. videos in the mid-90's. Cheerful. Ardent. Threatening, if you choose not to comply. It cheered, quietly but enthusiastically, as I added myself to yet another pointless group. This time it's "When I was your age, Pluto was a planet." I don't know the point of it, but it looks like fun. Or at least, it did.

It used to be so easy to criticize the so called "Facebook Zombies," the ones who always had their laptop or internet-enabled phone with them, and seemed to be under some inexplicable compulsion to check Facebook every five minutes. They struck me almost as terminal patients, forced to get their e-meds else they would sicken and die. I used to be able to laugh when I realized that the Zombie next to me in Sociology 201 checked her profile exactly 20 times each class. I timed class not by my wristwatch, but by Google Chrome, set to any one of the fansites she was a part of.

It's harder to laugh now. As I write this, I have Facebook in another tab, ready to flip to at any given second. If I'm to be entirely honest, the odds are certainly in the bettor's favor that I am on that vice of a website right as you're reading this.

I don't think there's a medicated gum that will get me out of it this time.