Well, I guess it all comes down to whatever floats your spiritual boat. In this case the spiritual boat is floating straight out of Facebook—they’ll be back in a month (some of them sooner, probably). Welcome to Lent 2.0, if I may be so crass.
What would Mark Zuckerberg do? If I were him, I’d sit back and marvel, not just that my college days thingamabob has amassed 175 million social networking faithful, but also that a portion of them love Facebook so much they honor it with ritual sacrifice.
Last year it was college kids giving up Facebook for Lent—a 40 day sacrifice of some cherished affectation in advance of Easter, a small, mildly psychologically uncomfortable lifestyle change usually involving chocolate or bacon or soda pop as a nod of appreciation that actually wandering out into the wilderness to hang out with the Devil is no longer required—and we all chuckled. Those kids, always making something out of nothing.
It seems now those kids were trendsetters. Grownups, who gave in and migrated on over once they learned all their old buddies they hadn’t seen since they had a 28 waist were using Facebook like the new chain-email alert system—did you hear that so and so…(sorry for all the digression—I may consider giving up dependent clauses, complicated punctuation and asides, myself, teach myself the simple, ascetic values of Hemingway), will be refraining from status updates and wall writing this year, too.
And it’s probably easier than giving up beer.
It seems spouses are getting grumpy, and things aren’t getting done like they once did because tubby spends too much time taking 80’s movie quizzes. Likely, too, being a grownup means one can’t have fun and not feel a little guilty about the indulgence.
So says the Wall Street Journal:
Lisandrea Wentland, who does research for a Christian TV network, plays Scrabble and trades amusing YouTube videos on Facebook. Every time she logs on, she says, “it’s like going to the best party in the world.”
Somebody should take Ms. Wentland to a real party sometime, probably Mr. Wentland. Or maybe it’s time to refer some people to a specialist in Internet addiction.
