Faceless

I have never had a Facebook account. At first, in middle school when everyone was creating an account, it simply did not occur to me to create one. As the years slowly pasted by, nothing ever compelled me to create an account. My friends told me to get one, and as the pressure increased, my initial apathy transformed into a principled defiance. I became the kid without a Facebook, and that was my identity.

In our postmodern culture, the identity we artificially create for ourselves is more important than our actual identity. One's Facebook page represents their character, and the emphasis placed on this representation is remarkable. Facebook users, ranging from tweens to seniors, obsess over the posts and pictures associated with their page. Rather than focus on one's actual character, many people choose to perfect their Facebook identity.

Seeing as I am the age at which Facebook takes the strongest whole on the user's life, to make an agist generalization, my lack of a Facebook account has strongly impacted my life. Most of my classes have Facebook pages, many of my teachers communicate via Facebook, and all of the major social happenings of my peers (from parties to relationships) are announced on Facebook.

What does it mean to lack an artificial identity in a culture in which the artificial is more essential than the actual? To a large extent it means social isolation, and feeling out of the loop. It means showing up at school or parties and learning pieces of public knowledge for the first time. These phenomena, though practically constant, are not really devastating. It turns out, you can live a full life as an American teenager without a Facebook! But the empirical impact on my life of not having a Facebook illustrates the degree to which our culture is truly postmodern.

But who is to say that this way of life is inferior? So many people jump to the conclusion that, once postmodernism is established as a defining element of contemporary life, this lifestyle degrades the human experience. I posit that perhaps it does not. Maybe postmodern life is just as rewarding as modern life. This is a question that requires reflection and investigation, and I have no definite answer.