I post a lot. In real life, I also share a lot. It’s a little like food – for my grandmother, food was tangible love, a wonderful thing to give and receive.
Facebook is the cocktail or dinner party that never ends, the baby step towards omniscience, the panopticon for those I most care about, and perhaps another thousand or so people I don’t know as well. It imposes a thin layer of reciprocal “keeping in the loop” and a gentle (and admittedly thin) social glue of community for the geographically distributed.
I grew up on what’s best described as a hippy commune, so from my earliest toddler memories, everyone who came and went on our property (a “Yoga Temple” and three homes in Coconut Grove, Florida) was someone to learn from, a friend, possibly extended family, someone to play with, to share a meal or conversation with. We learned to trust visitors, because they were usually people in the midst of deep introspection, usually attentive, kind to children.
Only now am I fully waking up to how deeply those early experiences probably shaped how I operate in the world. Everything, to some degree or another, is “ours.” And every experience seems enhanced when it is shared with other people, the communal “aaahhh” of that beautiful sunset or the contemplation or substantive chat threads that unfold under a controversial article, image, video or statement. I’m an introvert with significant extravert tendencies. Facebook teaches, presents opportunities (I have discovered paid consulting gigs and social adventures there), dispenses lessons and occasionally deceives. It can be a welcome serendipity engine in a world calibrated towards comfort and repetition. I prefer novelty, discovery, the glimpses into minds, feelings and preferences different from my own.
Yes, I’ve been the rube who occasionally posts something that a friend debunks (had I bothered a Google search before sharing). One had to do with extraterrestrial bacteria fossils supposedly discovered inside a meteor, a sad attempt to prove conclusively the theory of “transspermia” through false information. Thanks be to those who point this out. Mea culpas, so long as they’re the exceptions, are part of the endlessly expanding fire hose of online information. Though errors can and should be avoided, fallibility is not a big deal (someone will get us to the promised land of an annotated internet, so we gain knowledge of the credibility of discovered information, e.g. www.hypothes.is).
Fear of social and career consequences can be so delimiting, part of the same family of thought habits as perfectionism, the fetters that prevent us from learning, exploring, expressing or sharing in the first place. Why not live out loud a little? Celebrate your own joy in a way that can inspire others who are receptive to do the same. Yes, it’s probably not bright to post drunk or humiliating photos anywhere on the web, but maybe an occasional silly one does more to soften and enhance our personal brands than harm them? Both on and off line we generally choose our own isolation through a failure to gain comfort in vulnerability, in listening, learning and being helpful to others. Exhibitionism need not be narcissism. Voyeurism need not be somehow repulsive or ignoble. And both frankly are as American as stars and stripes or apple pie. Perhaps more so.