Brilliant status updates or award-winning prose?
RYAN: Facebook is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Looking for that friend who moved away 15 years ago? Oh, there he is. Think you’re the only one who watched My Brother and Me religiously? Nope, there’s a whole group of losers who loved that show (myself included). Want to be friends with people you never talk to? So do they! To think you can do all this on a single web site, all while getting paid—provided you do this all at work like everyone else. Sure, all of this may be happening on the surface, and none of said conversations are deep or meaningful, but do we really care? No, sir. We’re too busy to worry about little things like that. We’ve got to keep tabs on what our 700 friends have been doing since we’ve last checked an hour ago.
SHAWN: Let me introduce you to the REAL gift that keeps on giving: Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel relates the fascinating tale of a woman and her daughter creating a new life for themselves after escaping slavery. Boring, right? Well, what if I told you they live in a house…THAT’S HAUNTED?! Move over, mini-feed (status change: “Ryan is masturbating”), get ready for adventure, mystery, and confronting the painful memories of your past. The greatest works in history have story arcs and raw emotion and active readership, not stalking applications, lists of favorite movies that all feature Garden State, and Scrabulous—no matter how delightful and pathetic those things may be. I’ll think about turning my back on Beloved if you can show me Oprah starring in the film version of Facebook.
Danny Glover hasn't made a decent film since Angels in the Outfield.
RYAN: The only gift Beloved gives me is an annoying headache. Page after page of unnecessary dialogue, narration, symbolism, blah blah blah. I don’t need that garbage to understand people. Just give me their interests, hobbies, favorite movies and TV shows, access to their wall, and a minimum of two photo albums complete with tags, and I’ll have everything I need. That’s what Facebook is all about: providing us with the Cliffs Notes for all our friends. With just the click of a mouse, I can see someone has a birthday in two days, recently broke up with a longtime girlfriend, and just spent a semester studying abroad. Now I’m all caught up after months of not talking. And if story arcs and raw emotion are what you truly crave, then look no further than Facebook.com. Just friend someone who wears their heart on their sleeve and thinks each new relationship is “the one”. A hilarious newsfeed booming with relationship-filled status updates will be your reward.
SHAWN: I’m not going to go so far as to call you unsophisticated, but you’ve been known to wipe food off your chin with a hobo. Boring dialogue? Let’s compare. Beloved: “Freeing yourself was one thing: claiming ownership of that freed self was another.” Facebook: “6 of your friends are giving away free Pieces of Flair!” Beloved: “You could be lost forever, if there wasn’t nobody to show you the way.” Facebook: “Cindi is I can’t belive tomorrow is already TUesday…” Yeah, good reading right there, good reading. As wonderful as my Facebook friends are (hi, all 9231 of you I all surely know personally), I’d rather read the extended version of the story of interesting people than the Cliffs Notes on that girl I used to chase around in kindergarten and haven’t seen since. Beloved has inspired generations; Facebook reminds you that you stopped making friends after college.
RYAN: You’ve got 9231 friends on Facebook? Sorry, I didn’t realize you were one of those people. Maybe I should put it another way for you: if it weren’t for Facebook, how could you possibly gauge your own popularity? With some book? Puh-lease. You need Facebook. I know it. You know it. Charlie American knows it. Facebook provides you a warm little security blanket that you can wrap yourself up in every time you log in and see your never-ending list of “friends”. Beloved may be all well and good (I’m still skeptical when Oprah’s involved), but you probably read it once then put it on your bookshelf with all the other forgotten “masterpieces” that you have no intention of reading again. Try going a day without logging into Facebook. You can’t. And while you’re at it, maybe you should change your status to “Shawn is wrong”.
Nothing wrong with a nice security blanket.
SHAWN: If I change my status, the only thing I’ll be changing it to is “Shawn is rereading the greatest piece of American literature to date, blown away by the precise and poignant characterization of post-slavery America!” Except that it might not fit, since Facebook only lets you write like two lines. Facebook would never be able to contain the power of Toni Morrison: “Toni has attempted to merge those two words, black and feminist, because she was surrounded by black women who were very tough and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and”. Have some goddamn respect, Facebook. And might I point out that thousands of Facebook users list Toni Morrison under their Favorite Quotes, while, at most, a mere one or two Toni Morrison novels quote Facebook. I’d rather deal with the life-changing, intellectual decisions found in Beloved than the difficult decision of “Poke back vs. ignore”.
Next on Danger Queue: Pinot Noir vs. Film Noir—Noir’s the New Black
Danger Queue 