I'm so done

I absolutely cannot control myself. Every time I log onto Facebook, I will inevitably start to browse everyone else's Facebook stuff, pictures and comments and mostly more pictures, ultimately making me feel like a pile of utter crap. It's a matter of comparison: I already hate myself enough, seeing all these people positively delighted with theirs makes me want to throw myself off a bridge.

But hey, thanks to research, I know I'm not alone!

"According to the study by Utah Valley University, the more the people use the hugely popular social networking website, the more they will believe that others are much happier, the Daily Mail reported."--IANS, of the Tribune.

So, I nailed it on the head. Something about seeing everyone else having a great time makes you feel like you're not. The United States, which is the superpower of the free world, is second place in the world for life-time Depression, right after France. Think about it: we're one of the most prosperous, educated, elite countries in the world, and we're the second most depressed. Think of all those countries in Africa that you see on TV reminding you for all that your life sucks, it could be so much worse. And yet, those countries, on  the sliding scale of depression, don't out top us. So again: it's a matter of comparison.

Man, screw this. I am so done. All of it is just a bunch of pretentious, dick-measuring contest in the first place. While I'm not the type to advocate the evils of new age technology and social media, I'll be first to say that what Facebook does is make us diminutive, a tool that flattens the complexity and struggle of a human being to 140 characters or less or some stupid picture of cartoon animals with the caption, "tag which one applies to you! xoxox." Because we are so much more than that---and people are in flux, and we are growing, and Facebook lets us remember our stupidity, how we looked and how we thought when we were younger, envelops old grudges in a manilla folder format, when really they should be let go, let bygones be bygones. But nothing truly dies on the internet.

And do you know how absolutely creepy and disturbing that is? My uncle died several years ago, and being able to see his profile on Facebook was...it felt wrong. In a sense, it felt disrespectful. He was so much more than his profile. It presented him less than he actually was. I...if I die, I certainly don't want to be an old profile haunting Facebook. God, anything but that.

Jesus. Guess what I'm gonna go delete now?