What made headlines late last week? What great news story caught the attention of our young generation? Certainly we were all talking about the unveiling of the Republican Party’s “Pledge to America.” Or perhaps the fact that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s comments at the United Nations General Assembly caused 33 delegations—including the U.S. and all 27 members of the European Union—to walk out. Or maybe even the fishy business that transpired between China and Japan on the East China Sea.
Or how about this one: Facebook crashed. Two days in a row. And I bet you knew about the Facebook Crash of Sept. 23-24, 2010. Cue the Dust Bowl of neglected Farmvilles across America. Cue the Great Psychological Depression of procrastinators who suddenly found nothing to distract them from their next problem set.
If, continuing this slapdash analogy, Mark Zuckerberg is our fearless president, then he stimulated a recovery in a matter of hours, far more quickly than how long it took to fix that other economic depression.
Still, in the brief hours of its occurrence, the Crash sparked enough attention to warrant continual monitoring on NPR’s news blog and a number of other media outlets. Facebook tweeted (with no doubt a hint of irony) that it was experiencing “site issues.” Later, when everything had been fixed, Facebook (posting on its own site now) issued two apologies, along with an in-depth explanation of what had happened.
Do I sense a dependency issue here? Sure, there might be a degree of response bias to the pieces of evidence I just listed, but Facebook’s more than 500-million user count speaks for itself, as does the constant stream of updates on my news feed. Ignore Facebook for more than a few hours, and there are bound to be 300-plus updates waiting for my casual perusal.
Skeptical readers will have already thought the obvious by now: We’ve heard this complaint before. Stop whining. Just get off the site already.
But is there such an easy fix? I’ve tried to wean myself off Facebook in the past—there are Firefox extensions that block your access to websites—but it’s never worked out permanently. Give it a few days, and I’ll always find myself crawling back to check my wall posts, friend someone I met or simply revel in the blue-and-white microcosm of social interaction.
What’s interesting is the fact that we’ve all bought into this arguably unhealthy yet somehow acceptable behavior. At the very least, Facebook is a casual way for people to interact with one another. At the worst, it represents a sort of herd addiction: Once you’re in, it’s nearly impossible to get out (just like the stock market, if you want to continue your financial analogy). As with a real addiction, the environmental factors are stacked against you—your friends are into it, you’re constantly reminded of it, you feel lost without it.
And though Facebook isn’t actually a dopamine agonist, I’d bet money that those pesky red notification flags actually trigger dopamine spikes in our brains. (“What would you do for a popular Facebook status?” the psychologists in white lab coats would ask, pen poised for action above their research forms.)
These revelations are unproductive, though, because how would we talk about our concerns if not by starting a Facebook thread? How would we organize a Facebook addicts support group if not by creating a Facebook group?
In this case, admitting you have a problem is the first step to aggravating the problem. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so tragically true.
So, to entirely avoid the issue at hand and to prepare us for the next Facebook crash (knock on wood), I offer up a list of things to do when Facebook crashes, modeled after TechCrunch’s list of “15 Alternative Things to Do” when Twitter is down (which I found while aimlessly surfing the internet during the last Crash):
1. Panic.
2. Try loading Facebook on Firefox.
3. Try loading Facebook on Chrome.
4. Try loading Facebook on Safari.
5. Fall asleep in Econ 51.
6. Try to access Facebook remotely using PuTTY. (Engineers only.)
7. Now you can’t stalk that hot chick you met at Shooters. Bummer. Get drunk instead. (Fratstars only.)
8. Continue doing nothing with your life. (English majors only.)
9. Lose all connection to the outside world. (Central Campus residents only.)
10. Nothing. Your account is deactivated because of an orgo test tomorrow. (Pre-meds only.)
11. Scoff at this “first world problem.” Secretly refresh Facebook anyway. (Hipsters only. But be careful: Facebook might reflect off your black-frame glasses and give you away.)
12. Threaten to have your lawyer sue Zuckerberg for inconveniences. (Pre-yuppies only.)
Shining Li is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Monday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.