- Full of dross
- Lacking both sophistication and boundaries
- The biggest thief of time since Tetris
However, I also find myself fighting Facebook’s corner. In amongst all the rubbish I skim over several times a day, there lies some of the most powerful content the world has ever seen. It is an incubator for burgeoning creativity and showcases some of the best examples of the human spirit. It could do with a disclaimer or two but, for the reasons just listed, I think Facebook’s alright.
The feature that has prompted me to write this post is the “status update”. I joined Facebook in 2007 after leaving full time employment. I had resisted signing up to the site but my ex-colleagues all urged me to let them know how I was getting on. I thought that Facebook might be an efficient way of letting people know “what Katie did next” (hence the Katydid that was my first profile picture). Back then all status updates were preceded by “is”. Your name would appear on the left followed by an “is” and your status update would follow on from it on the right, creating a sentence. For example:
Katie – is – a bum.
(The first ever status update I posted)
Some people ignored the obligatory formation and just wrote their own thing. For example:
John – is – I think I’m gonna buy a new CD, maybe some Scouting For Girls, Maroon 5 or Leona Lewis
(John and his musical wishlist are made up. The artists, however, are true to 2007 – I checked)
While I admire John for his renegade approach, the pedant in me just could not engage in this sort of behaviour. Having been given the starting point of “Katie is” I felt compelled to compose posts both in the third person and the present tense.
Sometime later, Facebook realised that a lot of people did not much care for the prescriptive “is” and decided to ditch it. This opened up a whole host of opportunities but, with my name still being to the immediate left of my status update, I felt obliged to continue writing in the 3rd person. The tense, however, was mine to do with as I pleased!
If I remember rightly, at this time, there were still a large number of people who shared my style. This started to change when Facebook moved the user’s name to the line above the status update. (Madness, I know!) I carried on as before but it started to feel increasingly awkward as more and more people transitioned to using the status update as a statement in its own right. What’s more, it looked like I was failing to start each sentence with a capital (because the start of each sentence was my name, on the line above). The thought of being mistaken as someone with substandard punctuation absolutely horrified me. This would have been a good reason to make the change but it seems even new habits die hard so I carried on.
Despite the nagging feeling that I was being ever so lame, I’m glad I stood my ground. Limiting myself in this way forced me to be all the more creative and ingenious. I would spend a lot of energy thinking up posts, making sure they were grammatically correct. Luckily, when creativity and ingenuity produce satisfying results you get a whole lot of energy back in return. It seems Facebook can be quite the motivator too. My favourite example is when I was able to directly quote a line from a +44 song 2 years ago today:
Katie
got caught by the four on the floor
Posting this apparent nonsense and then being able to explain it in joyfully complicated language gave me the boost I needed prior to a tough day at work.
Strangely, 6 years ago today I was able to hint at a forthcoming poignant event via a Green Day lyric that would raise a smile with a friend:
Katie
is going to go to church on Sunday
I could not have quoted these properly (and got so much enjoyment from them) had I not used the 3rd person.
Despite all the benefits, for the past few years I have been thinking about putting the 3rd person to bed. When I started this blog I thought it would be nice to complete an entry on just this topic and then start afresh. Facebook has changed and I must too. However, I rarely alter my behaviour without a good kick up the backside, which is why I am only writing this up now. The reason I am doing so on this particular day is a good one. I had a couple of minutes to spare earlier on this evening so I did the usual trawl of my newsfeed. Once I’d exhausted that I began to look for further reading. I remembered that Facebook has an “On this day” function (or at least I think that’s what it is called – mine is set to Pirate English so I get “T’day in years past”) and away I clicked. It turns out that, on 20th November 2011, I wrote the following:
Katie
still writes her status updates in the 3rd person
I took that as nothing less than a sign so here I am, 4 years later, saying goodbye to the 3rd person and welcoming whatever arrives in her place.