Sawasdee

It's an interesting question I get sometimes. I'm traveling alone so I tend to meet other individuals or small groups on my trip and hang out with them. Then, when it's time to part they always ask the same thing: "Are you on facebook?" Now this is a silly question for two reasons: first, everyone and their grandmother is on facebook, the fucking queen of England is on facebook so its not a real question; the real question is "hey, will you write down your full name for me so I can find you and friend you on facebook?" which is cool, I mean that's what facebook is for, but really just ask that question. The second reason its a silly question is - I'm not on facebook. The look of shock on people's faces when I have to tell them that is of great interest to me every time I see it. After all, like I said, everyone is on facebook, the last thing they expect when they ask that question is "No, actually I'm not".


Now there is a reason I bring all this up in my first and only post from Thailand (oh, I'm currently in Thailand by the way). Facebook is a wonderful thing for travelers; it allows them to stay connected with friends and family at home, it allows them to share their exciting stories and pictures from their adventures all over the world, and it allows them to create and maintain their connections with people they meet while traveling. In fact of the dozen or so people in this internet cafe with me right now, more than half that I can see are currently on their facebook page. Now I have no problem with any of this, as I've said before, facebook is perfectly fine, I have no real beef with it. I don't care that people are on, I don't really even care that people spend every waking moment of their lives on it. There are better ways to spend your life, but hey, its your life. My problem with facebook is purely personal and I won't get into it here. Again the reason I bring this up is not a gripe with facebook but merely as an observation of what a useful tool it can be for the serious traveler. I mean, lets face it, half the reason most of us go on trips like is so that we can feel superior to others. (Right? No? Oh...) And little makes us feel more superior to others than when we compare facebook status updates. "Mark had the BEST nap today!!! :)" Yeah, not bad but how about "Chris went swimming with elephants in the River Kwai today." Now say what you want about naps and, personally, I quite love them, but let's face it, one is significantly cooler than the other.

I guess really the point of all this is just to reiterate that I'm not going to be getting on facebook anytime soon. Yes when I left facebook I quite literally lost all contact with almost every friend I had, a contact that almost a year later has neither returned nor been replaced. It's significantly more difficult living in this world without facebook, I won't deny it. I know that nobody reads this blog as a result of that. I know that I could very much lord over my friends my exciting adventures in Asia if I were on facebook. In fact, if I were to return to facebook today and remake all those old connections I could act even more superior for how long I lived without facebook. But I'm not going to. Has my point been made? According to my therapist, yes, apparently it has. But I didn't do it to make a point. I did it for me. And I'm not going back on it now just because it would make my life a whole lot easier. We lived in this world a long time without facebook and before you know it, it'll be replaced by something else seemingly essentially to our daily lives. And will I jump onto that once facebook is gone? Maybe. But I like to think I won't. Because it's just, I don't know, it's just not for me.

Going back to my point at the beginning, I am always asked "Are you on facebook?" And my answer is always, "No, actually I'm not." And then I shrug. The other person always gets really flustered there and the conversation changes to, "Oh, well then we should exchange emails then." "Yeah," I say, "That'd work too."