Facebook, Friends, Darwinism & 1996
Allow me to take you back in time…it’s two years after high school. You graduated in 1996 (Weezer’s Pinkerton is in the tape deck of your car) – an era before Facebook, MySpace. Your social network did not exist. Your friends did.
Something has happened where we have allowed our lives to be, forgive me, cluttered by people. People who likely weren’t fit to survive the friend test prior to the advent of online friends or circles. People who we may even spend time, precious time, looking at their family photos, reading their status updates, or perhaps even communicating with. And to what end? Do these relationships add value to our lives? More likely than not, we are spending this time focusing on someone who, had social networks stayed extinct, we may not recognize today. They would pass us by in the deli aisle at Whole Foods with their children strapped to a plastic-car grocery cart, and we wouldn’t have exchanged a word. And life would be equally as beautiful.
Facebook, Google +, and whatever other social networks will exist have screwed with the natural, social evolution of our relationships. People came and went from our lives. We learned lessons. We moved on. Now, they are all here – and they are here for good. I’m not sure we are better off for it.
