BY ADAM DALVA

In print | April 10, 2008

To be honest, I think we should probably just all give up. Now, I realize it is mid-April at Swarthmore and that sentence is all too common and requires further explanation, but at this point it is all probably redundant anyway, since the odds of people reading this are low. This is not because of exams, honors preps, finals, imbroglios of what Pepe Le Peu would call le Coeur, Sharples burn-out, the impending return of the Office, the burgeoning specter of allergy season (which approaches with the unalienable force of 1000 freight trains powered by plutonium suns) or the fact that everyone around you has mysteriously stopped showering, although I have used all these as excuses in extension request emails recently. No, the end of productivity is nigh, because Facebook has just decided to add a chat feature. I know, right?

No one is happy about this. Even the most die hard Hemingway-bullfighter-esque aficionados have reacted to the news with widened eyes and broad expletives before huddling a little deeper into their surprisingly unplush library chairs and attempting to return to their badly stapled blackboard printouts. What started as a whisper, a quick diversion for students of the elitist privileged schools on the coasts, has become a billion dollar entity and the source of more wasted hours than anything since the invention of fun, and now it has finally reached the point where you can’t even click the red x on the top right since there will doubtless always be a convo with “friends” from home or roommates too lazy to speak to be found.

We should have realized the baby was evil, should have stepped on this young Frankenstein’s neck when it was still thefacebook.com and didn’t have pictures and everyone’s “about me” was wistfully unironic, a mercy killing if there ever was one, giving hope for the future of our academic careers and ensuring that there never would be a day when my Grandmother and I could see each other’s walls, but now it is too late, the second Death Star is a fully operational battle station and even Admiral Ackbar can’t get us out of this one. People are going to be more dedicated to this sleek beast than the hundreds of us hitting refresh every fifteen minutes on the comments section of “M: A Rebuttal.” (My two cents? The Phoenix never should have lost the sex columns due to our idiotic no-pseudonyms policy, and I’m glad M is getting some publicity because the column in question was the strongest of the dirty bunch. Additionally, I look forward to the day when I can be shocked by content after clicking on a hyperlink that says “Masturbatory Mishaps” … because my newfound decrepitude will allow me to wander the streets shouting insults at strangers who will be forced to respond with kindness and return me to the futuristic retirement cube where I belong.)

Yes, hope is lost, plummeting faster than AOL’s stock, and at this point we all might as well accept that in ten years we’ll be lying in our Facebookbeds writing our Facebooktheses while half-heartedly trying to stop that weird quiet kid with the unnecessarily overpacked backpack from the back of your Anthro class from looking directly into our Facebookminds. You might think that I’m exaggerating here, that this will be a blip and this user-friendly website is merely providing us with a free service, but consider this: the new JSTOR proudly proclaims as one of its bragging points that it is “active in Facebook.” Call me old-fashioned if you like, but if the stodgy academic locus point that has bailed us all out over the years but continues to bore us with its Renaissance texts and Doric columns is pursuing crossover appeal, there is a serious problem here. Resistance is futile indeed. At this point, everytime I consider clicking on the Facebook icon I feel a revulsion/lure combo that is only matched by the secret palpitations invoked by a Jive Turkey post.

Look, I’m thankful for everything that Facebook has done for me over the years. The constant melding of text and images is essentially a giant flash card system that has, for the first time in my life, allowed me to remember people’s names once I see their faces. I know that, right up until my parents kick me out and call me a free-loader, I will have an easy resource that will allow me to access visual evidence of four years of cross-dressing and liquid-induced reveries, but this is one step too far, more tragic than the Phoenix’s complete lack of an April Fool’s edition. (My dream of an anonymous gossip column deferred for a final, brutal time!) No, it’s been real Facebook, but it’s time to cut the cord and find sustenance in flesh and blood physical interactions and the joy of a successful essay. What’s that? She just edited her relationship status? Well, I guess one more look couldn’t hurt …

Adam is a senior. You can reach him at adalva1@swarthmore.edu.

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