The Facebook Experiment Part II...

Well, it came and went. As I expected, the turnout of Facebook birthday messages was significantly smaller than in past years. I did however, receive four messages and none of them were along the simple lines of "Happy birthday" or "hope it's a good one". 

The first was from an old high school friend who happened to share the same birthday with me and the only Facebook contact we have with each other is on our birthday. The tradition continued.

The second one came from a friend here at Trent who did ask me when my birthday was, but after hearing about my Facebook experiment she elected to post anyways, which was nice of her. 

The last two came from friends of mine in Winnipeg. Whether they knew it was my birthday or they simply saw the messages from the others is tough to say. I'll hope for the former. Either way, it was still very nice of them to write to me, especially since each had a nice little message.

I did also receive a few nice emails from close friends and some phone calls, which was also quite nice.

Thank you everyone.

The Facebook birthday experiment...

So tomorrow I'm turning 21. It's pretty cool. I get nice phone calls from family and close friends, some gifts and a few pints at the pub. This year though, I'm expecting that there will be a large number of people who don't realize it's my birthday. Why? I've deleted my birthday on Facebook.

In the past few years, my birthdays have been great, but I've routinely opened my email to find that I have tons of messages in my inbox. Sadly, most of them are from Facebook, telling me that one of my 'friends' has written on my 'wall'. I know what each message says and its fairly uniform: 'Happy Birthday!' accompanied by something along the lines of, 'hope it's a good one' or 'have fun partyin'.

Last year I got 40 or so of these messages. It's nice getting happy birthday messages, but what really concerns me is the reason for sending it and how these people know it's my birthday. Is it because they've remembered it from memory? Doubtful. Chances are they got a little alert on Facebook telling them it's my Bday and a few clicks later a congratulatory message is sitting in my inbox.

Great. But it just isn't genuine. Some of the best birthday wishes I've gotten since being on Facebook have been from close friends of mine, who either take the time to pick up a phone and call me or at least email me. I'm yet to have family members Facebook birthday me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened in the future.

So here's the experiment. Now that my birthday isn't listed on Facebook, how many birthday wishes will I get? Any? It'll be interesting.

I'll let you know in a few days how it pans out.

The importance of newspapers...

If you've been following the massive chain reaction that the current economic crisis is producing, you might have heard about the impending collapse of the newspaper industry. Companies like CanWest (a massive Canadian media conglomerate) are dangerously close to defaulting on its loans--which are in the tens of billions--used to purchase a swath of North American news outlets. Throughout the country, large newspapers are now being forced to cutback, continually announcing expansion cutbacks and job losses. 

Much of the current downfall is being blamed on declining advertising revenues (a newspaper's largest source of revenue), but the newspaper industry has been on a downward spiral for quite some time. The rise of the internet has perhaps been the greatest enemy of the industry, as readers can now gather their information online (often for free) and from a wider range of sources. And where the people go, the advertisers (and more importantly, their money) go. Bloggers are being partially blamed for the downfall. Even environmental concerns and an impatient society unwilling to sit down and read the morning paper over a cup o' Joe can be blamed for the industry's potential downfall. 

Many are saying good riddance. There's no need for newspapers, or at least the print versions. But these people are wrong. Dead wrong.

Newspapers are our best source of credible information. It is true, there is much concern over the monopolization of the industry and the top-down influence on the paper's content, but the majority of our news service from newspapers is credible. No matter what the conspiracy theorists say, we can trust most newspapers, as long as we act as critically thinking readers. 

Imagine a world without newspapers (including those who have moved online), where the only source of information comes from TV, unregulated websites, magazines and ahem, blogs (I would trust a Globe & Mail article over anything found on this site 9 times out of 10). TV is wonderful, but even more at risk of this top-down influence and is often greatly condensed. The unregulated sources are often fraught with mixed and inaccurate information.

We need newspapers because they keep us well-informed. They are trustworthy, credible sources; the catalysts of democracy, if you will. Many have columns that allow credible writers to dish out their honest opinion (it is true that this is not always the case, as has been seen with the numerous and controversial drops of Gwynne Dyer's column). Some that have adopted sophisticated websites now have blogs from reporters, columnists and editors, allowing them to express their thoughts on issues without the constraints of the mainstream news.

I would not be surprised to see it and other media outlets suddenly come crawling to the door of the government looking for some handouts. And with the automotive sector getting much of its way, I don't see why the newspapers couldn't get the same. 

The newspaper industry has its control issues, but it is absolutely necessary to keep around. If not for the democratic and informative benefits, then at least for those who still find the time to sit down with a cup of coffee or an afternoon snack and read the print version.   

Dear Facebook: You're no longer my BFF...

OK, so FB and I were never BFFs, but I think mine is a common sentiment among people who are beginning to realize that our relationship to FB may be a little too close.

Over the past few months I've been gradually trimming down my footprint on FB. Information regarding personal interests and whatnot was removed, then silly applications and the piece that seemed to grab the most attention: my relationship status. I had been listed as 'single', but I just removed the status altogether. But, FB notifies everyone that I 'am no longer listed as single'. Needless to say, messages came flowing in asking who my new lover was. Sorry, my real relationship status never changed.

Today I went on a greater rampage. Most personal information was removed, including my birthday (darn, I won't be receiving FB birthday messages anymore...) and work experience. I'm now one of those lame FBers who provides very little information about themself. Sorry, kids. I even elected to remove over 100 'friends'. Do I talk to them? No. Have I ever had a real frienship with them? Maybe, but not really anymore. Do I really want to know what's going on in their lives, let alone they know what's going on in my life? Not particularly. What a strange thing to do, but it's done.

So why did I do such a thing? Why am I shutting myself off from the world of FB?

I've mentioned the future risks of FB before. Photos could come back to bite us in 30 years when we're running this world; potential employers can peruse our profiles at their will; and stuff about us could get out there that we really don't need spread over the internet. These risks played a part, but it's really the present nature of FB that bothers me.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other day regarding FB and we discussed how bizarre FB is. Yes, having 'friends' is strange, especially when we trust them to have a full-blown view of us. Posting our photo albums online for everyone to see is similar to inviting all these people to your home and going through your photo albums. That's kind of weird.

I have found that certain friendships have become de-personalized, whereby phone and lengthy email dialogue has now been replaced by 'wall posts'. What a shame. Sure, it's great for quick messages, but when it becomes the norm, the seriousness of the friendship degrades.

I do enjoy aspects of FB. I can look at pictures, advertise my blogs and keep in touch with some people who may not use email or phone. But that's about it.

Perhaps I'm crazy and am just trying to stop the inevitable. Maybe FB will one day swallow us all up. But I'm not the only one doing this, and I doubt I'll be the last.

If I had a billion dollars...

A billion dollars used to seem like a lot of money. But nowadays, that value has somehow diminished in my mind. 

Don't get me wrong, it is still a lot of money. I have no idea (and probably never will) what having that kind of money would be like and when a lot of thought is put into it, a billion dollars is a whole whack of cash. 

But I'm talking about the bigger picture. When I hear that a company is worth $1.7B, I think to myself, "Oh, it's only $1.7B. That's not too big." Or even when I hear that the Big Three are losing tens of billions of dollars; it just doesn't hit me as hard as it once might have.

So why is this happening in my crazy ol' mind? I think it has to do with the amount of money being thrown around in this economic crisis. Remember the much-heralded $700B bailout plan that was the talk of the town for so many weeks? I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot about it. Because apparently it wasn't enough. There were other bailout plans passed through, some in the $200B range, but even those don't seem all that big anymore. Compared to $700B, $200B is just a tack-on. 

Once it became known that $700B wasn't nearly enough to fix everything, the notional value of a billion fell off the map. With these absolutely ridiculous dollar figures being thrown around daily on the news, it's not hard to imagine why the lesser figures aren't as meaningful anymore. Remember when hearing that Bill Gates had $50B or something silly like that? That ain't nothin' in my head now, at least in comparison to everything else. 

It's strange. A billion dollars is a lot of money. But it just doesn't have that same ring to it. Who would've thunk it?  

Santa's sleigh might be a little lighter this year...

No, jolly ol' St. Nick hasn't suddenly realized that he is at a massive risk of diabetes and heart disease and decided to sign up for Jenny Craig's attractive weight loss program. Although, who's to say he hasn't. It has been quite awhile since we've seen him last.

The lightness of his sleigh won't come from Santa himself, but from his bag of goodies. Something tells me Christmas won't be quite the same this year.

The economic crisis that has hit us is already starting to have significant effects on people's savings, values of their homes, their jobs and ultimately their spending practices. But here we are in mid-November. This is the time when our consumption-laden society starts to vamp up for the Christmas (holiday, to be politically correct) shopping season. This is when the wallets are supposed to open up so we can all buy those sweet, sweet goods we all know and love. I'm not quite sure that will happen this year.

The crisis is far from over and far from starting to recover. Many of the big box stores that thrive off the holiday season are preparing for the worst, as many of them have shut down numerous stores and the people who rely on them for temporary employment (students, stay-at-home parents, the elderly etc) during the season are being turned away in droves. And this crisis certainly won't be solved by people going out and spending money (circa 2001). Nobody has any.

So what will this mean for little Johnny and Sally Smith, who have been used to getting the latest iPod or XBox for the past decade of holiday seasons? Well, one can only hope the parents will be able to say no. And they better, because many will be financially forced to say no. I'm not sure how much good a new Wii will be if there's no electricity to run it after the hydro company shuts your power off for accruing bills that are far past due.

People may now be able to cherish those long-lost staples of the holiday season that are commonly gawked at: being with friends and family, non-materialistic generosity and being thankful for what we have. A little hokey, isn't it? But there's something to it.

I come from a relatively privileged household and grew up with my Christmas focus being all the great gifts I got. And rarely did my parents disappoint. This is not to say I was spoiled, but I put a higher value on materialistic gifts than on the other parts of the holiday. I didn't really realize it to its full extent until I moved away from home and was only able to see family every few months. I didn't care about the gifts or anything like that (although they still are nice to get); I was far happier to be home enjoying what I had.

I also had a terribly frustrating time during my first year of holiday shopping on my own. I figured that since I was away from home I could bring everyone cool, exotic gifts. The price tag was high (especially when I had become financially independent and much poorer than I had ever been), but I didn't care because I knew everyone would be happy with such things. I didn't quite get the reaction I was looking for, which was a little troubling. But I later realized everyone was just happy to see me and there was no materialistic value anyone can put on that.

So now I hesitate to spend ridiculous amounts on people. Not because they won't care about the gifts or be happy about them, but because they value the non-materialistic pieces more. And it is a far nicer way to enjoy the holidays.

There is a silver lining in this crisis. We've focused on consumerism and materialistic value for far too long. If people are able to shift away from this come the holidays, it could be one of the most valuable and humbling shifts we could ever take.