FFFL

Among the cute animal footage, the quizzes and the omnipresent and now largely repetitive slagging off of Donald Trump in Facebook, even the casual voyeur can often find something of real merit. I am not talking of the so-called inspirational and aspirational quotes that proliferate. Nor am I talking of the plethora of posts that threaten to reveal who we were in a past life or, macabrely, predict when we shall die.
No, I am talking about the posts that invite us on a shared journey into our earlier lives. This life, not a past one. They usually comprise photos of the way we were. In extreme cases, and I am guilty of this, they may even be our baby photos, though, in my case, what interest my low-slung nappies and slobbering lips had to the Facebook Fraternity was certainly called into question.
But, what is fascinating about some of these posts is not what they are, but what they represent. I have a very good friend: a woman with a fine and now adult family. She and I have been friends for about 40 years, though we lost touch for a long time—time enough for her to have her family, for them to grow up, and for me to have forgotten what she looked like 40 years ago.
Last week I was reminded.
Her daughter, a beautiful young woman in her own right, posted a photo of herself as a young child—perhaps four—dancing with my friend, her mother, then probably in her 20s. Being a photo, one can only imagine the exuberance of that dance. However, it is patently there. And there is also in that photo a sense of the now—not the past, as short as it was, nor the future that would challenge them both. But of the moment, of the present, of the share joy of being together, captured so many years ago in one photo and shared just last week by the daughter to celebrate her mother’s birthday.
And to share the love.
The term share the love can these days be rather trite. Nevertheless, it can often be an expression of sheer and sincere intent. Facebook, for all its faults, can be good for that,
Thank You Mark Zuckerberg
Thank you Sarah.

It takes four seconds to hit the water

It takes four seconds to hit the water after leaping from San Fransisco’s Golden Gate bridge. For many who take the leap of fate it is, as intended, the last four seconds of their lives. Few survive. One who did is Ken Baldwin, who jumped in 1985. He later recalled thinking during his four-second freefall that,  'I instantly realised that everything in my life I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable--except for having just jumped.' Now, that is a statement for posterity. That is a statement for Facebook. And it now seems that posterity and Facebook may well be one in the same.
A NZ Herald report this morning says that by the end of the century there will be more dead people on Facebook than living. The Herald is reporting on a claim by University of Massachusetts statistician, Hachem Sadikki, who describes Facebook as the world’s largest digital graveyard. I have no way off disputing Mr Sadikki’s claim, so I accept it. However, initially it made me uncomfortable. I thought it morbid, possibly voyeuristic. But, then I thought: why not?Through Facebook we have the opportunity to leave a little piece of ourselves for posterity—for future generations; our children, their children and their children’s children. It is not morbid. It is a gift. And, after all, generations before us have left diaries for future generations.
Yes, Facebook is more complex than a diary, but even that has merit. Without diminishing the written diary, I feel Facebook provides a greater insight into our daily lives: who we engaged with, who were our “friends”, what we did, how we felt, how stupid (largely, our photos) we could be, what we enjoyed and what we hated. And if we start now with that thought, we can even leave our pithy little sayings to posterity—something I am now doing on Mr Baldwin’s behalf.
Facebook has a policy of not automatically deleting a dead person’s Facebook page. Nor should they. Surely that should be left to the family or friends of the deceased.
But what they (Facebook) can do is allow us to nominate a ‘legacy owner’ who is empowered to keep our Facebook page alive and refreshed long after we are dead—a living dead legacy. Future generations might even want to use the social media site to send back messages to long-dead generations.
The only problem I see with that, is if they get a reply.

Doing it by the (Face)Book

Saying I worked in advertising is something of an oxymoron. There was very little work, as I now know it, but a lot of drinking, card playing and cavorting. At the time—in the 70s—it was the expectation of that industry and the envy of others. We were the bight young things before the stockbrokers stole the mantle and then destroyed it. I see many of the people I consorted with back then on Facebook. They look considerably older, much settled and, one supposes, a little wiser. There are only two I see in person and regularly. And that is after a hiatus of near-on 40 years in the case of one. The others are probably like me in that they are content in the constraint of the Facebook contact. Facebook is like that: it brings you close but not too close, and as you and I are of an age and of an age, we have various other ways of making contact, such as an old-fashioned method called a telephone. I find it remarkable that my sons employ Facebook as a preference to even email. Is email going the way vinyl and video…obsolete? Maybe text will be next…thank God. So I do enjoy the direct engagement with true friends as distinct to the Facebook kind. In fact I am having dinner tonight with the one of those I have retained from those far-off advertising days. The one with the hiatus and a past propensity to go Greek, so to speak. It should be enjoyable, lively and, if conspicuous consumption makes it far from memorable, it will be just like those far-off advertising days, before our lives became a timeline on Facebook.


----------------
Now playing: The Band - Life Is A Carnival
via FoxyTunes

----------------
Now playing: The Band - Life Is A Carnival
via FoxyTunes

----------------
Now playing: The Band - Life Is A Carnival
via FoxyTunes

The Two Faces of Facebook

There is a passage in The Social Network when Facebook co-creator, Mark Zuckerberg, says the servers serving the site and its 500 million friends must stay up. If they go down, he says, Facebook goes down and so does its credibility and quite possibly its future.
Well, this morning Facebook went down. It’s still down, at least for me. So, do I feel dispirited, distraught and deprived? No. I love Facebook but I am not addicted to it or reliant on it. For me it just serves as another way of keeping in touch with friends new and old. It doesn’t teach me anything or otherwise enrich my life and I can see why some don’t understand Facebook or its popularity and others openly despise, fear or simply ignore it.
But it’s there. There to share.
It’s there with its zillions of photos of drunk teenagers making silly finger signs, trash-talking students, stupid surveys, myriads of ads and invitations to parties at Castor Bay. Facebook can be stupid and stupefying.
But it’s also there for families and friends to share, to chat, and to upload photos, thoughts and memories in a manner that mail—even email—cannot accomplish.
I have heard some elderly folk lament the lack of personal contact and somehow blame Facebook for that. Well of course families and friends are different these days. Only it seems in Hamilton do they still stick together, picking on their banjos. The rest of us, as my own family attests, are spread throughout the world. Facebook is a way of bringing us together, keeping us together.
So there are two faces to Facebook. On balance I would have to venture the opinion the world is better off for having it.
Even if Facebook is still down on me; I am not down on it.


----------------
Now playing: Jimi Hendrix - The Star Spangled Banner
via FoxyTunes

In Your Face

I can understand how it happens. I can understand how it can be addictive in the fashion of assorted drugs, chocolate, coffee and, in my case, slaggng off Hamilton. I can also understand how some would get a degree of self-aggrandisement from it. But I don’t understand it at all. I cannot get my head around Facebook. Nor Twitter nor the myriad of other social networking methods that seemingly now dominate the Internet. I know how to use Facebook. Mostly. What I don’t know or understand is its attraction to its millions of users. Perhaps I cannot understand why anyone is in the least interested in “What’s on (my) mind” or maybe I find the predominantly congratulatory and laudatory messages somewhat implausible—I know that there a lot of nice people out there, but that many that often? One section of Facebook interests me though; it’s called The Wall. People leave messages on it. And in that, they are carrying on one of the longest traditions known to man—leaving a message for someone else to read at their leisure if that is their wish and their will. One knows that earliest Man did it and the tradition carries on today. I honour that, and I acknowledge the role Facebook has in that. But I did wonder what, of all the messages left through the aeons, which was the most famous and most resilient. It would depend on the language of course, but of English my vote would go to the ubiquitous Kilroy. Nobody knows who he was—if indeed there was a “he.” The not always reliable Wikipedia attributes the phrase and its associated graffiti to “calling cards” left by American servicemen serving in WWII. There are many urban legends attached to the Kilroy graffiti. One states that Adolf Hitler believed that Kilroy was some kind of American super spy because the graffiti kept turning up in secure Nazi installations, presumably having been actually brought on captured Allied military equipment. Another states that Stalin was the first to enter an outhouse especially built for the leaders at the Potsdam conference. Upon exiting, Stalin asked an aide: "Who is this Kilroy?" Another legend states that a German officer, having seen frequent "Kilroys" posted in different cities, told all of his men that if they happened to come across a "Kilroy" he wanted to question him personally. The graffiti is supposedly located on various significant or difficult-to-reach places such as on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, on the Marco Polo Bridge in China, in huts in Polynesia, on a high girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York, at the peak of Mt. Everest, on the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, scribbled in the dust on the moon, in World War II pillboxes scattered around Germany, on a tile in the bathroom of a Grainger in Baltimore, around the sewers of Paris, and, in tribute to its origin, engraved in the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. So, this Kilroy, whomever he may be, seems to have been here, there and everywhere. Except on Facebook. I am yet to see him make an appearance there—other than a site in homage to him. Perhaps he has passed on. Or simply perhaps the world has passed him by and he, like me, finds Facebook’s Wall sends him…well…up the wall.

----------------
Now playing: The Cure - Secrets [Home Demo]
via FoxyTunes