...and don't panic! The Know brings you advice during housing
A true friend is always there for you, especially when you're drunk.
Miss Quit regresses to her childhood this week as the prospect of beginning the "University of Life" looms.
This quit has been a long time coming….
Long, long ago, in a dark and distant world, there was a time when you had to send a text, an email or, shock horror, ring someone on the telephone if you needed to reach them. It was a time before hangovers and 9.15s, before bar crawls and fancy dress socials.
This was life BF – Before Facebook - and it was very dark indeed.
Every year it’s the same. The isolation of summer whirls by in a haze and suddenly, after months of disconnection, the new year begins with a slew of parties, events, socials and general merrymaking. The diary fills up and the sudden bombardment has the inbox bulging with unread messages. That is where the beloved Book de Face comes in like a shiny knight on a high, well-connected steed. It is, quite simply, the glue that holds Studentville together.
Yet, like the housemate that turned out to be a sociopath, it is a two-faced beast. For beyond the smiling, sociable face of FB lurks an ugly, addictive little shit-stirrer who brings out the worst in student humanity. Yes my friends, its true, too much Facebook can be a bad thing. Especially when you’re drunk.
Protest if you will, but I know exactly what you get up to after a not-so-great-but-still-managed-to-get-trashed night out. We’ve all done it: got a disappointingly small and greasy portion of chips on the long walk home and, after putting a heartbroken/pissed-off/generally unstable friend to bed, logged on just to see if anything interesting happened within the few hours you’ve spent away from a computer screen.
This, inevitably, turns into a shameless night of stalking and telltale red eyes in the morning.
Like all co-dependent relationships, the love-hate affair with our profile is extreme and riddled with resentful reliance. Whilst we all innocently claim to “only use it to keep in touch with people I hardly see” or for “photographic documentation of carnage” as one friend aptly put it, everyone knows from experience that it never ends there.
My experience this week was analogous to receiving a mosquito bite
Three hours of aimless profile-surfing later you realise that you actually have a tangible life to lead, one in which the number of people you would class as true ‘friends’ can be counted on your fingers, the giving of gifts/drinks/kisses actually means something, and strangers will not randomly poke you unless you are in Salvation and blocking the way to the bar.
And yet, we just can’t stop. My experience this week was analogous to receiving a mosquito bite. At first, you don’t really notice it. Then a little, niggling itch on the back of the hand rapidly turns into an almighty uncomfortable sensation with the power to take over your every thought. The more you resist the urge to scratch it, the more it taunts you with its email notifications.
Ok so maybe my analogy is a bit strained, but you get the gist. By Tuesday though the nasty, throbbing lump that is the tip of FB addiction had ebbed and soothed into a less noticeable little bump until, before I knew it, Friday had come and, for the first time in a long time, I had actually been successful in completing my quit.
It was a long struggle but I had managed to freed myself of addiction’s grip. How did I celebrate my victory, you ask? I immediately alerted the world of my triumph by proclaiming: Moran Sheleg is no longer Facebook’s bitch!
Damn. Shit. Bugger. I was doing so well.
One week in real-time may not be that long, but in FB time that’s the equivalent of about 6 months. In that time a lot can happen, and a LOT of very unflattering photos can (and will) be tagged. Paranoid and repentant, I crawled back to my old master vowing never to turn my back on its superior control over me again. As punishment I had to sift through the excess of unanswered messages and unconfirmed requests lying in wait of my shameful return.
So lets just all admit the magnitude of our enslavement to the virtual God that will ultimately be our downfall, and do away with false declarations of real, actual lives. Long live Facebook, and all who live vicariously through her.
And so it begins again…
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