Mark Davis is a conservative talk show host on WBAP 820AM in Dallas, Texas. He wrote the following in an op-ed article in the Dallas Morning News.
12:35 PM CST on Friday, January 30, 2009
Heaven help me, I am on Facebook. After months of resistance, here is one reformed skeptic's story:
A Facebook presence is what you make it. We are free to post and consume as much or as little as we wish. The first task is to find a profile photo, so that your mug accompanies you whenever you leave something on someone's "wall," a home-page repository for whatever a Facebooker wants you to know at first glance.
This is usually standard stuff like birthday and hometown. But you may reveal a political label, religion of choice and various cultural tastes. I approached with great caution, but with only my high school, college and professional data in the chum bucket, I was immediately latched onto by people I hadn't seen or spoken to since my childhood, college days or early stops in radio.
I didn't care about some of them then and don't much care now. But more than a few were unexpected delights, and in my few weeks of immersing myself in this universe, I have caught up with people whom I still value – and now it's not just through the haze of memory.
Part of the running reality show of Facebook involves updating your "status," defined by answering the question, "What are you doing right now?"
It can be a silly Truman Show play-by-play on your day ("Bill is watching TV," "Sarah is going to bed"), or it can chronicle loftier moments ("Bob just learned his daughter has been accepted at the Royal Academy of Ballet in London").
If you post a hot opinion, watch the crowd of people from your world gather to take sides. My expression of gratitude to President George W. Bush on his last day in office sparked a long back-and-forth featuring a friend of mine in the Army National Guard and my sister-in-law, who think I'm right, and a fifth-grade buddy and a friend's former boss, who think I'm nuts.
The status question perplexed me for days. How often do I have to update this thing? If I say, "Mark is fielding angry e-mails about smoking bans," that won't be true two hours from now. I learned the art of broader status proclamations, as when I proclaimed, "Mark despises the needless two-week wait for the Super Bowl."
And I scoreboarded every friend I ever had a couple of weeks ago: "Mark just walked out of the Oval Office."
I was able to chronicle that (and everything else in my life) with that other staple of Facebook – photos. I now know what all my old friends' kids look like and where they all went on vacation. That doesn't mean I actually wanted to know all of this – leading to another Facebook attribute, the ability to mitigate annoyances.
You can filter things to get less from some people, more from others, or block unwanted "friend requests." I have made ample use of this, because unlike kinder souls like Mark Cuban (over 3,600 "friends") and radio host Kidd Kraddick (over 4,600 "friends"), I am trying to limit this to people relevant to my actual life.
I am told this is futile, but in the meantime someone has taken the liberty of starting a group called "Mark Davis Fans," a safety net for the growing community that I am ignoring because my bar is set between hermit and curmudgeon.
Even among my friend list, I am seeking to dissuade various behaviors. There are zillions of groups – New York Jets fans, Jane Austen admirers, peanut allergy sufferers – and I have begged people not to invite me to join any of them. And don't send me anything – no virtual plants, cute e-cards or little bumper stickers.
And for Pete's sake, don't "poke" me – a mouse click that does nothing more than leave messages like "You have been poked by Tommy," a sentence I never want to read online or anywhere else.
But the positives far outweigh the very manageable negatives. If the Internet is eroding human interaction as we've historically known it, at least Facebook gives back with its guaranteed jolt of old memories and new technology.
Mark Davis is heard weekdays from 8:30 to 11 a.m. on WBAP-AM, News/Talk 820. His e-mail address is mdavis@wbap.com.
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