Hypnotized By Facebook

I didn’t even last a week. Three days into my resolution, I logged on to Facebook. In my defense, it was quasi-accidental. Here’s what happened:

When I meet new, interesting people, I often Google them to find out a little bit about their background, their accomplishments,

or anything else that might be interesting. These Googlings are surprisingly effective and fruitful.

So a couple of days ago, I was Googling someone, and a link to their Facebook profile appeared in Google’s search results. These results are a relatively new feature of Facebook– in the past, Facebook didn’t expose their accounts to Google’s searches– so I was intrigued when I saw the link and knew it would be a good source of information, since it was essentially maintained by the person themselves.

When I clicked the link, I had to login. When I logged in, I saw the person’s profile, which I read. It wasn’t until I had finished reading that I realized what I had done: I was on Facebook. Fuck! Essentially, I was in my “research” mode, whereas when I usually go on Facebook, I am in “killing time” mode; I connect Facebook with doing nothing productive, so I was unable to connect a legitimate use of Facebook with my resolution.

I logged out immediately. I did not read any mail, check any of my friends’ walls, open my notifications, or any of the normal things I do when using the site, so I am cutting myself some slack: I am starting this resolution over again.