fearroyo on Facebook Suicide

Committing Facebook suicide was a term I was unfamiliar with until I read King’s feature article. I had not realized the extent that an online persona can virtually (no pun intended) consume an individual’s life. I realize that a common remark and defense for Facebook addicts –the “I have no life”- really is a defensive tactic to save face for their self more than save face in front of an esteemed counterpart because the addict’s online persona is not the perfect persona one wishes to achieve. I mean to distinguish individuals that actively and quite literally post their life online to the avid individuals that do so out of necessity after learning about Hasan Elahi’s ordeal with the United States federal government.

In order to provide a fair position, I refer to individuals as addicts that invest at least 4 hours a week (or 10% of the standard fulltime employment status of a working individual) to modifying or altering their online persona through popular mainstream social-networking sites in an attempt to boost their popularity amongst their social group, peers, or acquaintances. I measure popularity as the time of the addict’s peers response to –since the time of posting- not only common statements with little educational content, but also provocative statements that incite an emotional response from an individual reading the addict’s posting.

Comprehending the issues that addicts, Facebook addicts, any particular type of addict within the realm of social-networking sites has been a confound for me, particularly because I find most of these sites useful to extract personal contact information to contact individuals in the real world through email rather than popular sites. Personally, I do indeed have a Facebook account, but one with very little investment with signs of little interest from when I first began to modify my account. I don’t think I would consider committing “Facebook suicide” as King did so in his personal crisis particularly because although I may not spend more than 20 minutes a week using my account to communicate with friends, acquaintances, and social groups (and that alone providing evidence for other’s to encourage committing Facebook suicide on the grounds that I am not active), I use Facebook as an archive of personal contact information that is likely to be updated more frequently than say extrapolating the information through other means such as asking an individual for any changes in their life. It would not occur to me to simply delete my Facebook account because I am not involved with creating an augmented persona, nor willingly wipe out precious contact information. I reiterate the idea of maintaining contact information on my peers in case of emergency, or if I need a favor from any particular person and wish to have the information ready on site.

I believe King’s article does capture the essence of the dilemma for online social-networking addicts; and that is the existential crisis that is accompanied by the question of what has more fungible capital value, the online persona, or the addict’s actual life?

I found this particular parody on social-networking addicts to be quite comical, the work is done by Flash artist Johnny Utah on the newgrounds.com website. Please be aware the parody contains disturbing scenes of violence and mild sexual references. Enjoy!

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/498203