The social network epidemic

He said, “It intensifies your personality.” And I said, “Yes, but what if you’re an a**hole?”— Bill Cosby

Through social networks, we peel off layers of people’s personalities, like an onion, and discover new dimensions, like how stupid or insane some of them can be.

I have a weird relationship with social networks, and I recently relapsed into the stuff, mainly because it’s good for business — or at least that’s my justification for it. And when I did I was naturally rushed back into the double-edged, acid-like trip of networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; and was seized by an epiphanous vision of living an alternate life.

This cyberlife was generally hassle-free because you could leave it anytime you wanted, unless you were a long-term user and permanently embedded, in which case your sudden silence would be real cause for alarm. There were no bills or strange addictions to worry about on Facebook, except the addiction to Facebook itself, which could easily slide into a pattern of foul degeneracy.

People fiend on these networks, I’ve noticed, and every time I log back into the cyber-scene I understand the reasons better. They inhabit opiate versions of their own lives where all of their friends are there, but you can never touch them. I guess you would call that an escape, which has always been the hook. If a problem occurred, you had the options to delete, block, hide, cancel, or even deactivate.

But here’s what I dwelt on: Facebook and all these other social networks, in some queer and magical way, brought you back to your childhood, when all you gave a crap about was playing with your friends — all of them, anytime you wanted. But at the same time they encouraged you to be an adult, engaging in all manner of conversation and dialogue where all opinions are heard and the drunks, boobs, and boors are kept at just the right distance where you can cringe at their miscreant behavior without engaging them physically. It was like living in television.

Are these networks perfect parties? The horizon-less variety of chatter, people telling jokes and laughing and playing music and sharing opinions — it’s a high just like any other. You walk into that party and are in complete control of who you are; yet you cut loose and swim like a dolphin in a sea of bottomless jabber. Sounds like cocaine, but it isn’t. 

You also peel off layers of people’s personalities, like an onion, and discover new dimensions, like how stupid or insane some of them can be, and vice-versa. It is an incredibly textured ensemble cast of characters that populate social networks, and through their words, posts, tweets and pictures, you discover who they are and who they want to be, in a way that could never be done in real life. 

But for every yin, there is yang, and so there is also a rotten underbelly that deals with how secure or private your cyberlife really is, and thinking about it made me feel anxious and uneasy. I typically ignore end-user agreements, as I suspect most people do (who wants to read 14,000 words?), but I was urged to read mine by an article I read in The Telegraph, and what I discovered was horrifying.

For photos and videos that you post on these sites, you grant them non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use whatever you post... Jesus, really? That sounds almost extremely sketchy to me — but the grim irony is I’ve got this sudden urge to post something right now, almost as if the only thing that could cure this uneasiness was to feed the uneasiness itself. The wrong-headed realities of any abusive habit, and it gets worse. The license agreement ends when you delete your content or your account, unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it. Well of course it’s been shared with others, it’s a social media account! Which basically means that once you’ve shared something, you’ve done more than “share” it — you’ve handed Facebook or Instagram a copy for them to do as they please; and, when you really think about, we already knew this, but just don’t seem to care.

Man… how’s that for a paranoid conspiracy theory? Well, let’s face it: 1984 is now, and Big Brother is out there, and I don’t think anybody can really dispute that. Stay tight-lipped online, unless you’re comfortable about the possibility of skeletons collapsing out of the closet someday. Imagine if everybody in the world lived in Las Vegas — that’s the Internet.

Everybody should be carded before walking into it. It is swarmed with pigs and pederasts and villainous predators of every possible persuasion, and children should be protected from them, because sometimes the right idea can go terribly, terribly wrong.

Regardless of whether we actually use them or not, social networks are a part of our lives. And when we do use them, it’s distressing to think about how much privacy we’re willing to sacrifice for a few cheap thrills. Everybody on the Internet lives on IP Street, and the lots are so narrow somebody from halfway across the world can see you brushing your teeth. 

So the next time you go online, don’t be too over-confident. Because you might be sitting in the most comfortable part of your own home —but the whole world is sitting right next to you. 

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Stay tuned for my new blog and follow me on Instagram (josemariugarte) and Twitter (@josemariugarte), where I will do my best to pollute your mind with blind, random gibberish.