Pfft! Here comes another sucker for Facebook

By Yeoh Siew Hoon

The first time I issued invites to friends to join Facebook, I got these responses.

“I hear it’s more social than business. No time.” This came from a friend living in Hong Kong (of course).

“I don’t dare. I have an addictive personality.” This from someone who loves his cigarettes and beer.

“I hear they are building the world’s first Yellow Pages. I don’t want to be part of that.” This from a friend who could very well be a shopaholic but is probably in denial.

“It’s a dating site. I don’t need it.” This from someone who secretly needs to get a life but rejects all forms of it that are unknown.

This week, I got an invite from an eight-year-old, Sasha Lye, who wanted me to be her friend. I couldn’t resist. After a “gig” last week in which I played MC for a graduation ceremony for 26 six-year-olds, I have a new-found bond with children, especially if they are other people’s children.

I mean, how cool do I have to be that a child, as sweet, as innocent and as imaginative as Sasha is, would want me to be her friend on Facebook. On her Wall, she’s got an Aquarium.

I can send her creatures that swim to add to her collection.
In the middle of my poking Sasha, I read an article which went, “I got a Facebook ‘friend’ request – from mum”.

It was about a young girl in Singapore who logged onto Facebook one morning and found a friend’s request from her mum. She felt it “really weird”.

In the end, after much rumination – “it can be tough to strike a balance: In the same breath as we discuss the workings of our relationship over a glass of port, she would nag me to clean up my room” – she accepted because she thought, “One day she might even become my best friend – not just one on Facebook.”

Truth is, according to Facebook statistics, the numbers of oldies joining the site are growing faster than the young ones. From April 2006 to April 2007, the 45-54 and 55-64 increased by 63% and 83% respectively. The 18-24 grew only 30%.

If you ask me, I think that’s probably because the oldies are just finding out about it and realising it’s more than “for kids” and so they have “started invading our turf”, to quote the writer of the “mummy” article.

After my initial plunge into the Facebook world, where I was body-slamming people willy-nilly until I was mentally blue and black, I have kind of pulled back from it. Truth is, it could grow into a time-sucking monster if you are not careful.

See, Facebook is like the air that rushes into vacuum bags. And it can be insidious and invasive in the way it just whooshes in and fills it up.

The emptier your life, the more it rushes in to fill up that space so that it makes you feel you actually have a life when, in truth, all you have are vampire kisses and coloured beads that you can’t even feel or touch.

Truth is, I am constantly amazed by how much people are willing to share online and here I too plead, mea culpa. (There is something cathartic about letting those fingers tap away at the keyboard and articulating thoughts from deep within to empty air.)

But hey, who’s reading and watching? I hardly have time to read what’s on my Wall, let alone others’, but I guess someone is.

We share songs we like. And suddenly, a sign pops up that says, “Buy.” We talk about books we like. And in comes a message that says something like, if you like this, you will like this. We are encouraged to buy gifts for our friends.

At the heart of it, I reckon Facebook is merely lining us up as individual consumers so someone out there can practice target shooting. And imagine if they start as young as little Sasha.

Ah, here comes another sucker willing to bare her soul in ether. Let’s get her. Pfft.

I sincerely hope Sasha is not reading this. Sasha’s the little girl who once wanted to show me her bedroom. When we walked in, she switched off all the lights, flicked on a torchlight and pointed it at the ceiling where there were some shiny things.

“This is my enchanted forest,” she said. “Up there are the stars.”
Yes, we may all end up in the Facebook gutter but some of us are still looking at the stars.

Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at The Transit Cafe