Why I'm Not On Facebook

I'm on my way back to Kuching and I'm stuck in a queue at the Tiger Airways check-in desk. There's a woman behind me talking very loudly on the phone.

"Hello!" she says, in Mandarin, "Yes hello Mr Wong I'm going back to Kuching now. Oh no the last person said that he wants to buy the unit for four fifty. Oh wait you're from Kuching too? Ahh! I didn't know that! You need ... oh you need the office number? I tell you what, I can't go online right now - but if you send me a message on Facebook I'll get back home tonight and send you a message with all the contact information. Yes, just find me on Facebook - you're my friend, right?"

I turn around, balancing the trio of bags I'm lugging around with me. The woman is in her late 20s, or early 30s, I can't be sure. She has laugh lines around her eyes. I look down, and I realize she's in office attire.

People making business transactions through Facebook, I thought, Waddya know?

*

Almost everyone I know has the same reaction when I tell them that I don't have a Facebook account. "What?!" they say, incredulous, "Why?". This has happened enough times that I'm sick of it, and I think it'd do to explain - just once - why I'm not on Facebook. Hopefully I won't ever need to explain my stand again. (Also: most people - after learning that I'm not on Facebook, try to convince me that I should sign up, and it'll only take a couple of seconds, and that it's free, and you know - why not?. Hopefully this post gives them pause).

I have a couple of reasons. I'll begin with the most mundane.

1.
I come to Facebook from Friendster. Friendster was bad. I spent two years of my life tweaking my profile and uploading awesome pictures of myself and writing testimonials for other people (and zealously watching my testimonial count) and then Friendster died. So I was really lazy to do that all over again, on a new social network I wasn't sure would last. My sister Charlene was lazy too. She's not on Facebook because she thinks "it's a waste of time".

But I'll admit - I was wrong about the first bit. I was wrong on Facebook not lasting. Facebook is cool, smart, and growing strong.

2.
I'm in computer science, and that means that I spend most of my time on a computer. I work on my computer, I study at my computer, and I relax doing stuff on my computer (though not always - I like taking long walks, lately).

I probably won't be as productive if I had a Facebook account. Facebook is incredibly addictive. And so it's weird - people say "you're in computing but you're not on Facebook?!" as if it's a crime - but of the people I know without Facebook accounts, almost all of them are CompSci majors. There's a simple reason for that: we can't turn our computers off to study, and so we value the ways in which we spend our computer time more than most other people do.

3.
In actual practice, staying out of Facebook isn't as bad as one may imagine. You don't know everything your friends are up to, but that's alright - if the experience was awesome they'd tell you it was awesome, and you'd be able to judge from the light in their eyes and tone of voice the degree of truth to what they're saying. And if it wasn't awesome, then they just won't tell you.

Being outside Facebook does another weird thing to you: it forces you to really listen to your friends when you meet up. Because you're not on the network, you can't tell yourself: 'oh I know what you think of so and so' based on a 200-word status update; instead you ask 'what do you think of so and so?' and then you really listen because you can't pretend to know. Sometimes this is annoying, because you're missing out on a readily available stream of information on the people you care most about. But most of the time it works out: you don't need so much information; you only need to know about your closest friends. And nobody has more than a handful of close friends. (By extension, updates from the rest are more noise than anything else.)

The other objection that my friends have with me is "but how are we going to stay connected?!" And my answer to that is: email me. I check my email on a daily basis, and I respond, archive, or delete email within 12 hours of reception. It's the only way I can handle school, work, and membership in four separate mailing lists.

4.
I keep two separate identities on the web. Most of my work with eBook and format spec groups happen under the name Eli James. I run Pandamian under Eli James, because the name carries some influence now in eBook circles. Facebook forces me to consolidate my two identities. I can't really do that.

5.
There's this thing Facebook does when you're about to delete your account. They say: x, y and z won't be able to connect with you if you quit Facebook! Are you really really sure?

I think that's morally despicable. Facebook's using my friends to ransom me to stay with the site. I understand why they're doing it, but it's a little like inviting me to a party and threatening me with my pals to get me to stick around.

6.
Facebook makes you lonely.

I'm not the first one to make this observation: Daniel Chong tweeted recently that teenagers, today, are the most connected in the history of mankind, and yet also the most lonely. I've thought about what he said for a bit, and I think he has a point. It's probably not a coincidence.

There's a simple reason for this, I think: when you're surfing Facebook you're looking at photos of beautiful people having fun. Because that's what people upload to Facebook, right? You see people posing in exotic places, or traipsing down cornfields, or partying their heads out at clubs and bars and other glamorous places. And because you're alone when you're surfing your social network, you feel left out. You feel as if there's a perpetual party going on, with somebody you know in it, and it's happening somewhere in the city but you're not invited.

Except that this isn't true. You just feel that way because all you see on Facebook are event pictures. And it's a warped view of the world. The true things that matter in life happen far away from event photos, and by extension, from the bluster of your social network. They happen in the private space between two lovers, or in the silent zone of the solitary builder. (Zuckerberg himself wrote the first version of Facebook in a month). Nobody changed the world by hanging out on Facebook all day long. And if you do so, you'll end up feeling rather lonely. For little marginal benefit.

7.
I'm not as connected because I'm not on Facebook. But I'm also not as lonely; I don't feel an urge to go hang out and take pictures to stave off a growing boredom (or to keep up with the perpetual party going on in the network). I take pleasure in spending long hours with a small group of friends, building things that matter to the world. Partly because that's cool, but mostly because it's fun.

I think that's a fairly good trade. Probably not for everyone, but good enough for me.

Breakfast at Mama's, and Some Photos

I had a free day, one day after the Books in Browsers conference concluded. I spent it having breakfast with my hosts at downtown San Francisco (three of the four housemates - Akshita stayed in because she had a meeting at Stanford later in the day). So we drove down - Xiao Chen had discovered this 4.5 star breakfast place on Yelp called Mama's and she chucked the address into the GPS and off we went.

The queue - true to form, as I later found out - was an hour long. Outside. In the cold.


(Those two ahpeks you see in the foreground? They were British, and as they walked by one said to another: "Boy, this place must be popular, ae?" in this Brit accent - which is very refreshing to hear, in California.)

So in the end Rollen and I decided to let Jenson and Xiao Chen wait it out in the queue, while we explored the surrounding neighbourhood. I wanted to photograph the roads. (Rollen was glad for an excuse to walk). We decided to get coffee for the other two, and stopped a lady crossing the street with a tray of coffee cups under her arm.

"Where'd you get the coffee, ma'am?" I asked.

"Oh - there's this place called Greco's. They have the best coffee in the neighbourhood, in my opinion. It's down the street, two and a half blocks down, look for the illy umbrellas out on the patio."

"What do you mean by ... good?" Rollen asked.

"Well I think -" and she paused, looking off into the distance, "this is my take, mind; but the coffee there tastes exactly like the coffee I had while I was in Europe. Love it. Only place I'd ever buy coffee, from around here."


I got a mocha for me and Xiao Chen, and a latte for Jenson. When we got back the queue was just as long, and they were in the middle of it.

"I think you should go figure out what you want for your order." Xiao Chen said, as she lifted her mocha off the cardboard tray.

I took photos of the dogs in the queue, and then stopped a lady in an overcoat leaving the restaurant -

"Was the food good, ma'am?"

"Ooh, you're in for a treat! Yes, it's good. Very, very good. First time here?"

"Yeah - from Singapore, and it's my last day in San Francisco today -"

"Right. These guys are famous for their french toast, so you'll be wanting the monte cristo, if you don't mind spending extra, that is ..."

"What's that?"

"Ahh - french toast and ham and cheese. A bit on the pricey side, but worth every penny!"


She wasn't kidding. I ordered the monte cristo, and we all agreed it was the best of four orders. The sandwiches are dipped into egg and grilled shut, and on the inside you get turkey, ham, and cheddar and havarti cheeses.


Served with grilled potatoes, orange and strawberry slices and homemade (really, in this case!) cranberry jam.

Rollen had the Sampler:


Which was banana bread french toast and fruit (he didn't like it). Xiao Chen and Jenson had crab benedict and shrimp benedict respectively:


We spent some time traipsing around the rest of the city that day - I'm surprised as to how steep some of the streets are in San Francisco, and how normal it seemed to the residents there.


It is, apparently, perfectly normal to find a 30-40 degree incline in downtown SF. Imagine biking (or skateboarding!) down one of those slopes!


And then there was Market Street, the posh financial district in downtown SF:


I took most of these on my first day in the city, because I had to buy an AT&T sim card and there weren't any at Ocean Avenue. So I took a BART down and wandered about, asking for directions.


San Francisco was ... an interesting place. But I arrived in Singapore this morning, and am glad to be back.