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The Facebook Effect

One thing that listening to really successful people talk does to me is that it makes me think how small I really am in the world. People like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have been my silent heroes for some time not because they are probably the most influential people in the world, but because of how much they understand about it before any of us did. Those people, these leaders and innovators, are truly inspiring human beings.

I was watching a few interviews done by the creator of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg and I just remember being dumbfounded by the world that he lives in. It's really an amazing thing to behold when people with that much influence talk to ordinary people about the effects of their creations; trying to level himself with the people. It was really an awesome thing to behold how much Facebook has grown in these past few years.

500 Million Facebook Users

The last time I checked, Facebook had over 500 million users who go online with active profiles. I checked the statistics on how many Christians there is in the world and there are over 2 billion. So that's like a quarter of what 2000 years of trying to get people in to a way of life compared to less than a decade of Facebook. That's amazing. But it's not that I'm comparing the two; you don't really need a laptop or a mobile phone to get you Christianity, it's just amazing how something can spread so fast.

With that great influence, a lot are strong anti-facebook groups have come up (hehe like anti-Christs, not that they're funny) with good reason. Facebook is, no matter how you look at it (whether consensual or not), is intrusive as far as the information requested on these profiles are concerned. Where else do you make available so many personal preferences, information, addresses, phone numbers, social games requesting your credit card information and even breaking into the sensitive information that we share over the internet, who can blame people if they get paranoid, right? Even the US Congress is looking into it! People learn so many things about us with just one page that it gets alarming and also quite depressing that sometimes we get the short end of the stick when they just dismiss us as such: just another page with a face.

Just Not Part of the Pie

I guess it's true that not too many Filipinos are aware that Facebook has received so many criticisms. I don't assume that people from the Philippines are ignorant to the many things that are going on in other countries today, but I think it's more of a case of "we can't relate" rather than "we don't know or care enough to learn about it." And a lot of people praise how facebook has revolutionized the way we interact with people by making it easy for us to connect and share things we like; to read and learn about what our friends like and all that; Facebook is great when it comes to that. 

Giving it Perspective

I just think that it didn't really change anything; Facebook just made otherwise complex human interaction into something simpler; it just made the things that were already there easier. It simplified how we live our lives in this big world; making it a lot smaller and making everything available to us. But sometimes, simplicity can be quite dangerous. If we live an overly simplified life, we tend to lose touch about how hard life really is. I guess it's like putting a wild tiger who is so used to the troubles of the forest to a cage in a zoo where everything is provided for it; just sitting there to be viewed. Simple life.

It's not that I don't really approve of where Facebook has taken 500 million lives to these past few years; it's actually quite the opposite. Through Facebook I was able to reconnect with so many people I'd otherwise forget and never think about again. Being on Facebook is an absolute treat that most people will cherish for the rest of their lives. Some people even find the love of their lives on Facebook! So all that's great. But I guess what I'm really trying to say is that although it's great to have a toy like Facebook where everything is just there in front of you; don't ever forget that everything else is the real thing. At the end of the day, toys are just simply toys.

The Real Life

So I've kind of made an objective for myself. If I want to befriend someone, it will not be because of a click. If I talk to someone, I will look at the person's eyes and really listen. If I want to unfriend someone, I'll do it the hard way. If I want to like someone's art post, I will tell him or her personally. And if I want to really log in, I'll log out. I hope you do too.
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