Web-Dancing with Yourself

Like most narcissistic Americans, I recently Googled my name on… Google. To my surprise, another woman with my name popped up. Pages and pages of her; almost nada of me. However, unlike me, she was an accomplished author and psychotherapist who has contributed to the betterment of society. Undaunted by the stark comparison, I decided to email her and find out what my doppelganger was all about.

My email explained my pointless quest to find out more about her since we shared the same first and last name. That, after all, almost made us related, didn’t it? She graciously replied and after several emails we stoked up enough curiosity to exchange phone numbers and have an historic conversation.

What I learned was that she was about the same age as me, our last names both came from our husbands, we were both Aquarians, studied journalism in college, lamented the atrophy of the Fourth Estate, were divorced with new partners and had daughters. She was a lot of fun to talk to and we promised we would get together for dinner sometime in the same way good friends who never get together promise that to each other. And along those lines, we occasionally exchange casual emails to make sure the other hasn’t expired.

Even more recently, I exercised another form of narcissism when I joined Ancestry.com. I was able to trace the Jewish side of the family to its emigration to America from Transylvanian Hungary back in 1906. But imagine my surprise when I was able to follow the family tree of my stalwart Christian ancestors back to William the Conqueror, his son, Henry I “Beauclerc” King of England, King Henry I Capet of France and several earlier kings of Sweden, Denmark and Uppsala. My favorite ancestor, because of her name, is Hilda of the Vandals. Very Heavy Metal. How credible is this genealogy? I have no idea. I found it on Ancestry.com. Who knows?

 One of my distant relatives, Henry I "Beauclerc" 

King of England, pictured in a bit of a mood.

It is strange how the Internet enables us to make immediate connections with people who, a decade ago, we never would have known about. These current and past ties will not result in any financial or social advantages nor will they lead to any epiphanies or reveal any long-lost secrets. But finding them was good, egocentric fun. And I guess, sometimes, that is enough.

How Facebook Ate My Time

I didn’t want to join Facebook. Honestly. But I kept getting invitations from everyone I have ever known since before I was conceived. Dozens of needy messages appeared in my inbox from people desperately, repeatedly pleading for me to be their Friend. It began to feel like I was the last holdout on the planet. Finally, I succumbed. I joined the cult. And strange things happened.

My two daughters "friended" me and I now knew where they were and what they were doing, occasionally in more detail than I might have wanted. It became easy to keep in touch with friends as well as the remotest of acquaintances. Even people I found personally irritating and for whom I had negative interest, kept me abreast of their nauseating whereabouts. I learned how to post my vacation pictures online and bore people senseless across the miles. I could multitask, conducting instant message conversations with people while reading my Wall, ignoring invitations and puzzling over some incomprehensible online game people seemed to be playing. I could offer LIKE votes of confidence for cool comments or links and skip over all the dumb stuff, of which there was no shortage. (Please don't ask me to LIKE your commitment to your Personal Savior. If you are that insecure, run to your nearest house of worship or become a Hare Krishna.)

Then, one day, I realized with horror that the seemingly innocuous Facebook was methodically, maniacally eating my time. I would start to read the latest writing on my Wall and hours later realized that I was still caught in the spidery web of social networking. Facebook postings invaded my email. The beast was everywhere. There was no escape.

It all seemed so innocent at first. Now I was lying in the gutter clutching my laptop—a social-a-holic on a daily binge. I wondered if previous generations had felt the same sense of creeping dread about the new-fangled technologies that had invaded their lives like intractable parasites—the car, radio, telephone, television. Not to mention more recent disruptions to our way of life including cable, computers, Internet, cell phones and GPS.

When something that didn’t previously exist in your life suddenly becomes an indivisible part of it, it becomes one more uncomfortable dependency, one more small loss of personal control.

Unless a 2012 catastrophe wipes out all communication, the social-networking monster is here to stay. It  hungrily eyes my personal time like a wolf tracking its prey. Its Boolean drool runs down my computer screen. Having consumed and digested me, we are now inseparable.