So you think Mark Zuckerberg and his cohorts are driving you mad with their latest changes to your newsfeed. Think again.
Facebook will roll out its newest feature called 'Timeline' by the end of September.
MANILA, Philippines — Facebook is heading towards a whole new level of crazy, by that I mean elevate your pissed-off-but-there’s-nothing-you-can-do-about-it-so-just-shut-up aggravation from normal to berserk.
By the end of the month, Facebook will roll out a new feature it calls “Timeline”, basically a sweeping overhaul of your profile page.
Your newsfeeds won’t be affected; just that page where you showcase everything about yourself for all the world to see.
I have been using it, and I so far have mixed feelings about it, the same emotions I would have if I were shoplifting: thrilled and terrified.
You see, Timeline mines every note, comment, status update, photo, video, link and “like” you’ve ever posted on Facebook – and they go as far back as when Facebook wasn’t even around yet (photos you tagged as from the 1990s, for instance, or a pre-Facebook info you appended to your personal details like your birthday or your daughter’s first communion) – and presents them on your profile page in a very visual, very detailed manner, in chronological order, hence a “timeline” or, as the Zuckerberg bunch professes, a “story of your life”.
I found it charming at first. I saw in my own timeline a digital scrapbook of everything that went on in my life since I became a citizen of Facebook on Aug 10, 2007. Mostly, it had something to do with nostalgia; you know, that cliche, that fuzzy feeling you get when you walk down memory lane.
Through a mosaic of words and photos, I began recalling specific moments in my life that I thought I had already consigned to the backup servers of my mind, to be forgotten, forever.
I was suddenly made aware that Fiona Chan and I became Facebook friends on Nov 7, 2007, and that I spent the better part of my Facebook time in 2007 playing Bogglific; that in 2008, I had my left ear pierced on Jan 8, I professed my love for Tina Fey on May 4, and I made 299 new Facebook friends; that I stopped smoking for a full three months in 2008 and 2009; and that I lost an iPod Touch on Dec 2, 2009.
Key moments in my life that I knew happened but somehow couldn’t place exactly when they happened were there, too. They had always just been “in the past”.
With Timeline, they suddenly had dates and photos and annotations and a label (Facebook now calls them "life events").
A near-death experience when I had my large intestines cut and resewn in December 2008. A superb journalist from Reuters dying of cancer on May 27 of that same year.
An acquaintance from college who passed on suddenly in September 2009 after a game of pick-up basketball.
Nearly packing up and heading off for a job in Jakarta in July 2009. Writing “ay masaya (is happy)” on my status box on Oct 31 last year.
As I sifted through everything that made up my so-called life, I suddenly realized something unsettling.
There it was, right in front of me, just as Mark Zuckerberg had promised – the story of my life, laid bare in all its drudgery and banality, a full accounting of boredom. It was the story of a basic functionary without ambition, or even hope of an ambition, of someone who had reached a plateau and had lost interest, except to maintain a basic salary sufficient to finance a low overhead subsistence.
That Facebook had to archive it in all its mundane glory is frankly mortifying. That people will now have access to it just makes it terrifying.
Timeline, the way I see it now, heralds the age of full personal accountability, of full disclosure.
Gone are the days when you can be ambiguous, even mysterious, and you can always try to reason your way out of a difficult situation by saying, “Oh, I totally forgot about that.”
You can no longer tell a human resources drone examining your CV that, as far as you can recall, you have no history of clinical depression because that drone sitting in front of you with the robotic voice will have the exact date when you posted statements on Facebook, such as “thinks life is a stale joke with no punchlines”, that could be interpreted as a manifestation of suicidal tendencies.
You’ll now have to be accountable for every status update, comment, note, photo, video, link or “like’’ you post on Facebook. Saying something like “I hate donuts” may seem so innocent to you now, but it may come to haunt you later in your life when, while on your deathbed, the only lifeline available to you will be a charitable donation from Dunkin’ Donuts.
I’m just saying.
Timeline is now a compelling argument for me to deactivate my Facebook account and switch fulltime to Google+, where I currently have four friends. But then I too believe that being on Facebook is like living in America: We can complain all we want, but we’ll never really leave. Eventually, I’d forget about how mad I was and go on enjoying Facebook and all the narcissistic bliss it brings.
You’ll see your profile page Timelined by the end of the month, but if you’re curious about the experience now, go to this helfpul site: http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-toenable-facebook-timeline/ You can also check out Facebook’s promotional video on YouTube.
(The author is a journalist currently working in Singapore. He also blogs at http://pininggapura.wordpress.com )
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