Interlude #5: Give me Facebook, or Give me Death

"Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts."
-Henry Brooks Adams
The novelties of one generation are only the resuscitated fashions of the generation before last.
-George Bernard Shaw, Three Plays for Puritans (preface)
"Men will sooner surrender their rights than their customs."
-Moritz Guedmann

Facebook. What is it? It's a website. It's a way to build social networks. It's a way to pass time. It's a college and now a high school cultural phenomenon. It is the Internet's newest version of metaphorical crack. Whatever you call it, Facebook has taken over computers across campus. It's spreading across the United States like a virus. You just can't stop it.
Like the Jackson Five song, registering onto Facebook is "ABC...easy as 1-2-3." Go to the Facebook website. Fill out a simple online registration form. Once they confirm your school e-mail, you're a new Facebook member. That's it. Once you're registered, there are many ways to kill time.
One of the greatest ways to waste time is to modify your Personal Profile. Search your hard drive and digital camera and look for the right profile picture. Let people know if you are looking for friendship or maybe more or whatever you can get. If that's not enough, let them know what are your interests. You can list the mundane or the more interesting. Be funny, be sarcastic, be yourself. And that's not all. There's more. Like music? Tell everyone your tastes in music. You can be as general or as specific as you want. Just type out what's on your iPod or what music your favorite radio station plays. You like movies? Got a fix for Tarantino flicks? Or are you a sucker for classics like Casablanca? List them all. Do you read books or magazines? You've got a space for your literary tastes. Got a favorite quote or two, witty or not? Tell the world in your Favorite Quotes section in your Personal Profile. Are you in a club? List them all. Got a job? Post it in your Personal Profile. If that wasn't enough ways to give a general or specific look at your personality, there's an About Me section. Write as much or as little as you want about yourself. Ramble about wombats, being an alien, or an international rock star. If you get tired of what you've got posted, change it as often or as little as you want.
If you aren't wasting enough time modifying your Personal Profile, then you might want to join one of the thousands of Facebook Groups you can join at your school. These groups range from the mundane to the just plain weird. Do you like ninjas? Join one of the many groups that involve ninjas. Maybe you've always wanted to proclaim your love for pirates and their superiority over ninjas. There's a group for you on Facebook. Maybe you're a fan of James Bond movies in general. Join the "Bond, James Bond" group available on Facebook. Along the same thread, you're not a fan of Bond, but you love the villains from SPECTRE like Dr. No and Auric Goldfinger. There's a group somewhere on Facebook. Love beer or alcohol in general? There's many groups to join. Got a preference for brunettes? There's a group for you. Think you're a big deal like The Weatherman? There's a group for you. So, you enjoy something really off the wall and there's no group that suits your tastes. Well, create a group and declare your love. Post messages in the group message board. And there's more.
You want to share your thoughts with people and you don't care who sees it. Post a message on a person's Message Board. Be creative or mundane. Post up funny or sexual ASCII text pictures. If you want to be more private, send them a personal message through Facebook's version of e-mail or Instant Messaging. Poke them. It's addictive.
You might be thinking, "Wow, that's a whole lot of features in Facebook already. Surely, that must be enough to satisfy the most jaded of Facebook users." Oh no. It's not enough. College students today need a lot more features to waste time than Personal Profiles, Facebook Groups, Personal Message Boards, Facebook Messages, and Facebook Pokes. There has to be more features.
You want to keep abreast of the parties that occur on campus on a Friday night? You have got Facebook Parties. It's a gigantic social calendar that lists what is occuring on any day of the week. Just search for a date and see what's coming up. Whether it is an official fraternity/sorority gig, a going away party, or just a massive kegger celebrating the end of the semester, you can find it on Facebook. Of course, you can create a Facebook Group, but what fun would that be?
You want to make an announcement? You could create flyers, photocopy them, post them all over campus, and spend God knows how much. Who knows what will happen? The school might take them down. People might tear them up and throw them away. People might not read them. With Facebook, you can pay $15 and have the entire school community on Facebook see your announcement. You'll know that thousands will see it. It's quick and easy.
The final time wasting feature of Facebook--the newest addition to the Facebook Universe--is the Facebook Photo Album. Let's say you went to a party with some of your friends from college. One of those great parties with loud music, cold beer, and some Beer Pong. Of course, you want to share this with your friends. Why else would you take them? Sending them by e-mail would take a giant attachment. Burning CDs would be costly, considering you would have to burn one every time you wanted to share them with friends. You post them on the Internet and let your friends see them. What website to use? Facebook thus came out with Facebook Photo Albums. You've now consolidated everything into one site. You could literally spend hours on Facebook.
But that's the rub. You could literally spend hours on Facebook. Everything else academic--listening in class, studying for tests, doing research--falls by the wayside. In law school, this has caused problems for some students. If you're a professor, you can tell when students aren't listening or paying attention. If you're a law school faculty member, how do you solve this problem? Do you cut off wireless Internet access as some schools have done? Do you make it an Honor Code violation? What do you do? It seems like an easy problem to solve, but it isn't.
If Shakespeare were writing about Facebook, he might write the following:

To Facebook or not to Facebook, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in law school to suffer
The drones and prating of terrible lectures,
Or to log on Facebook against a sea of boredom
And by web surfing end them. To nod, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The headaches and the thousand sleepy yawns
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a caffinated
Beverage to be drunk. To nod, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the
rub...

There are many things in heaven and earth, college student, than are dreamt of in your Facebook profile. So, does one Facebook or does one not Facebook? That is a good question and one that there is no good answer.