Week 33: Actual Friends was taken during a very successful party that I threw... I tend to throw weird parties on occasion. The theme for this particular evening was Tacky Prom and Reject Bridesmaid Dress Bowling. A colorful array of girls showed up to strut their stuff and tell stories of when, how and where they got their dresses. We kicked off the evening with sushi then proceeded to runway model our finds and finished with bowling. Good times.
I love that I know something quirky and weird about every single girl in this photo. I love that we had such a great time getting ready together and laughing at each other and voting for each other. The winner got a trophy that I got at a thrift store... a real bowling trophy that I sprayed with glitter and glued a hot pink skirt onto. It was gorgeous.
Anyway, the reason I picked this photo and topic is because I have a gripe about online profiling. I won't name names. Those of you who know me well know my beef.
I dislike the impersonal approach. I dislike the lack of boundaries. I dislike the voyeurism it promotes. I dislike the universal mantra chanted by the masses of the glory of "being connected." Ultimately, I believe it leaves everyone less connected... I dislike the way it allows people to be less truthful with themselves and with others by only including convenient facts rather than an entire, well-rounded actual relationship.
I think Week 33 was possible because I have actual friends. I am soo very glad that I have actual friends. Real live friends that won't be tagged in this photo. Real live friends with names and ages and children and grandchildren that won't be named here. Real live friends who wore chalky lipstick and pasty eyeshadow and torn pantyhose and a dress that someone had to be stapled into at the last minute...but you don't know who those girls are...those brilliant lovely...
I'd like to leave you with a bit of brilliance not my own...
"Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to avow them and half doubtful if they can after all be right. Put me back among my Friends and in half an hour-in ten minutes-these same views and standards become once more indisputable. The opinion of this little circle, while I am in it, outweighs that of a thousand outsiders: as Friendship strengthens, it will do this even when my Friends are far away. For we all wish to be judged by our peers, by the men 'after our own heart'. Only they really know our mind and only they judge it by standards we fully acknowledge. Theirs is the praise we really covet and the blame we really dread. The little pockets of early Christians survived because they cared exclusively for the love of 'the brethren' and stopped their ears to the opinion of the Pagan society all round them. But a circle of criminals, cranks, or perverts survives in just the same way; by becoming deaf to the opinions of the outer world by discounting it as the chatter of outsiders who 'don't understand', of the 'conventional', 'the bourgeois', the 'Establishment', of prigs, prudes and humbugs.
It is therefore easy to see why Authority frowns on Friendship. Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion. It may be a rebellion of serious thinkers against accepted clap-trap or of faddists against accepted good sense; of real artists against popular ugliness or of charlatans against civilised taste; of good men against the badness of society or of bad men against its goodness. Whichever it is, it will be unwelcome to Top People. In each knot of Friends there is a sectional 'pubic opinion' which fortifies its members against the public opinion of the community in general. Each therefore is a pocket of potential resistance. Men who have real Friends are less easy to manage or 'get at'; harder for good Authorities to correct or for bad Authorities to corrupt. Hence if our masters, by force or by propaganda about 'Togetherness' or by unobtrusively making privacy and unplanned leisure impossible, ever succeed in producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends, they will have removed certain dangers, and will also have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude."
~C.S. Lewis on Friendship taken from The Four Loves
Once again, I am thankful to have real, actual friends.
9 comments:
well, i have been meaning to call you and announce my final deletion of a certain networking sight. I finally threw in my towel on Sunday and thought to myself Sarah would be so PROUD of me! I am now living with my conviction through and through. It is so refreshing....I"M FREE!
We need to talk (more than you can ever know) I've been waiting for the the right moment to call.
Maybe Saturday?
So awesome... keep your eyes on the mailbox, friend. Can't wait until you throw another one of these parties just so I can wear a prom dress.
SWAK
-Svet
i love "real" friends :) there's nothing like being able to call someone your really close to when you need to cry or share something excitting. i also like some of the fun connections i make on myspace or facebooks, is that to say they're real or fake... i don't know about that. Some people on there truely are my friends, others more acquaintances. some of those friends live out of town and it's a way to keep up a little better.
I think it is important that we make time for our friends and have
meaningful relationship. You present some good points to ponder. and not to let the easy of being "connected" fool you into thinking you are :)
your real friend now and forever,
sarah schaefer kimberly :) muah!
like now if i say, i need to share with someone i have onion breath, is it ok to share now, with everyone, for fun, or should i call or text someone. ha ha :)
just kidding, but i really do have onion breath yikes, someone brought chicken salad sandwhiches at the ladies group today and yikes, good, but strong.
real friends can share like this :)
sarah k - again
Hey, I think that I took that photo. I was not dressed up because I came to join you straight from class. Those were some good times. I am very grateful to have a sister like you :)
To Sarah K:
Not sure I'm going so far as to call the online "communities" fake, although I do struggle with the fact that I get an impression of shallow vs. depth.
I guess one could argue that knowing someone has dragon breath yet loving them anyway is a product of the information shared (courtesy of technology nowadays...and not dependent on the frantic whisper we all relate to).
I would argue that the depth of the love is not generated or promoted because of the online profile but because of the actual friendship that exists...no matter the location of both friends.
The nice thing about my actual friends is that they don't have to get mass texts or twitters or updates or photos posted...yet they love me anyway.
Some of my dearest friends haven't seen a picture of me in the last year. They haven't looked at the whites of my eyes. They haven't hugged my neck or received a text from me.
That doesn't mean that we don't pick up right where we left off. In fact, I think we make more concerted efforts because we don't rely on profiles being updated.
Also, one of the biggest gripes I have is privacy. I ask: Is nothing sacred anymore? Does everyone need to know my status every minute?
This all spoken by a girl-who enjoys-going-off-the-grid-frequently to a girl-who-thrives-on-the-grid. ;)
And let's not forget the time wasted being glued to our facebook's "live feed" where we keep up with far more than our near and dear friends but in fact everyone in between and not even close to that.
And might I add that the very fact that facebook is storing all this private info you provide them with and then selling it to companies, research groups and our government AND once you delete your account they keep it all on file.
Troy and I were discussing how facebook has duped most of us into telling them everything about ourselves so they can gather all the info we normally would keep private from Big Brother. Do we really think that they provide all that web hosting for no reason????
My last rant is the insane lack of privacy we exercise in online networking sites. From the millions of young girls texting naughty pics of themselves to boyfriends or the the info we place online about us and our friends we are going to see a generation with no sense of privacy and no understanding of how vital that is to our personal protection.
One last thing (I'm fired up now :)
Why do we feel this need to place the most mundane boring facts about everything we are doing or thinking in our "now" news worthy status updates??? It is as if we have turned ourselves into little celebrities worthy of following the most meaningless random news about anything and everything.
As if my everyday current thoughts are so important, witty or valuable that I must be followed on twitter, my blog, my facebook, my myspace and through text messages.
Thus I feel we have de-valued the truly valuable, substituting online community for true community and at the end of the day have nothing that great to show for the connectedness we claim.
Reality is, keeping up with every single person I have ever met in my life is a very time consuming task that even if done on well on facebook equates to something very shallow and vapid.
We've all typed those short wall conversations where you say just enough to not seem rude. I think there is something to just keeping your memories and not necessarily all the people. We are not cut out to maintain that many relationships.
Yes it can be fun and a useful tool but the majority of it is pointless, kinda freaks me out and from now on I would rather just go old school and pick up the phone.
Whew!
Peace. I'm out.
~M(facebook sober for 5 days now)
A facebook conspiracy theory to consider:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B37wW9CGWyY
AMAZING!!!!!!!
Thank you for your inspiration...
I just may start myself a blog all the sudden.
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