By Garrick Hoffman, Liberal Arts Major

My first-ever submission for The Beacon was a three-part series of criticisms on Facebook, titled “Erase the Face”, back in 2012. For one of my last articles for my tenure at The Beacon, I’ve found it fitting to come full circle with one final examination on the social media platform.

I keep going back and forth between my activity and use of Facebook. It’s like this constant, internal tug-of-war within me. A tension of opposites.

On one hand, Facebook is a practical, vital tool for sharing information and communicating (exchanging music and videos, exposing/being exposed to news and current affairs, and rallying people together for a common cause, as just a few examples).

On the other – the one that continues to repel and repulse me, and the one that seems most pervasive – Facebook is a platform for hubris (false or not), vainglory, and expressions of negativity and day-to-day banalities.

Selfies. Pictures of one’s new car. Mundane sentiments. Attention-grabbing pictures and proclamations, be it achievements or laments. Restaurant dinners and fancy cocktails. Cats. Cats. Cats. And babies. These are just a few components of Facebook’s obnoxious, vexing, mind-numbing effects on me.

Humans are naturally gregarious animals. We flock toward and with one another. We crave acceptance. We hunger for approval. We long for kind words and compliments and attention. Our lives are essentially dependent on each other. We oftentimes can’t get where we want/need to be without support from fellow man. This transcends well into our use in these networks whose accompanied adjective is precise: social.

But the way that it is so often used compels me to just sign on, check my messages or notifications, maybe read the “Trending” news, and once complete, just sign off. Seldom I post something on it, but really only when I feel it’s something worth sharing, such as art I’ve created. As an artist I feel this perpetual desire to share; whether or not that’s perceived as hubris is debatable and not really up to me. But I try not to take it overboard by bludgeoning the Facebook community with my this-and-that. Tumblr is my means for that activity because people are actively choosing to follow me – or maybe that’s just how I rationalize it.

I feel that when I begin to scroll down on the newsfeed I’m subjected to various emotions and thoughts. I roll my eyes. I feel stupefied. I think, “Why is this being presented to me?”

It’s not that I don’t actually care about my Facebook friends. They’re all humans, they all feel excited or down at times, and Facebook is their means to express these emotions. Also, a lot of them are my actual friends, if not acquaintances – people whom I have stake in because we’ve crossed paths in this world and shared friendly exchanges. I wish prosperity for everyone and I don’t wish ill upon them. And ultimately, what everyone posts is so commonplace in this epoch of ours that we consider these things hand-in-hand with social media and even life itself now. I just personally have an adverse reaction to a lot of it.

I say all of this with a degree of irony and perhaps hypocrisy, as I am absolutely guilty of a history of posts that are political, silly, vainglorious, and in search of validation, among others. My profile picture “boasts” me behind my farmer’s market artist stand with my guitar in hand and my photography on my table. When I returned from a sojourn in Hawaii, I almost immediately uploaded a bounty of images, which in retrospect seemed show-offy since it was my first time traveling outside of Maine (“Look where I went! See?!”).

I suppose I still seek validation from my friends and peers, but not actively on social media via my own controlled means (though any artist probably seeks praise or attention for their work – but it doesn’t dishearten me terribly if I don’t receive it). If people post pictures/information about me, I feel more comfortable because it doesn’t appear as if I’m trying; it appears beyond my control.

In my sociology class last year, my class and I learned about and discussed Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgical Perspective on Social Interaction. The concept is characterized by a “front stage” and a “backstage.” According to the sociology page on about.com, these stages “describe the relationship between the roles actors play at a given moment and the various audiences these roles involve. When we perform a role in relation to an audience (society), that role is on front stage and our performance (behavior) is open to judgment by those who observe it.

“The backstage region is a place where the actors can discuss, polish, or refine their performance without revealing themselves to their audience. It also allows them to express aspects of themselves that their audience would find unacceptable.”

My immediate thought: Facebook is our “front stage,” wherein users “perform” for their Facebook friends and avoid displaying their “backstage.” The front stage provides the persona we want to broadcast about ourselves and is often used to flatter that persona. This is why people upload flattering pictures, post about their achievements in their statuses, and so on. Likewise, this is why we oftentimes don’t post incriminating or embarrassing images or statuses that could otherwise atrophy our self-image that we broadcast.

I was extremely cynical of Facebook for a while (can you tell I still have some of that in me?). As I mentioned, my first articles for The Beacon explicitly condemned the social media website. I deleted my Facebook for a number of months. At some point down the line I reactivated it. I haven’t harbored as much fervent cynicism or contempt toward it, but certainly I’ve always been aware of its (mis)use. Thankfully I was never one to be so submerged in it that it practically defined my leisure hours, which I know many people out there can’t say.

I, indeed, continue to use it. I still find a lot of pragmatic use for it, and I try to eschew posting things that I personally find unattractive. I’ve found that the less one uses Facebook, the more enigmatic one becomes; after all, where’s the fodder for conversation when your friends, family, and peers already know your life’s story?

I’m sticking to that.