goddamn you chile

¡maldito facebook! i held out all year. i didn't want to approve students of mine on facebook because i didn't really feel comfortable with them peering into very personal moments in my life while they were still in my classes - moments when i was dressed like a woman, kissing a man, drinking from the bottle, moments from last week. then the end of the first semester came around and i was still hesitant, but by that time it was because i just felt like they were kinda obsessive about it and they needed to get out more. other gringo professors here at duocUC didn't seem to mind so much, they'd approve chileans they didn't even know just to up their respective chilean friend count (james klopp). i felt differently. i felt that me holding out could be the potential impetus of a chilean social revolution - a return to the live discovery of people, their preferences, idiosyncrasies, and pasts. as the end of the second semester approached, my holding out became more and more of a sticky conversation point - a dirty look, a rolling of the eyes as i explained that i just never really used the bastardly social network. i had to break eventually and figured the end of semester two, in which i taught students i really, really loved, would be the right time to do it. kill me with a blunt knife.

last week i approved a student and went to a class barbecue and for the past 3 days my gmail inbox has been a jaded wasteland of trashed and about to be trashed facebook notices. i gotta change my goddamn settings goddammit. they're crazy. there's no two ways about it. chileans live on facebook and they don't live meagerly. most cats have 100+ applications, take more mirror myspace shots than a nebraskan middle school, and then there's the albums. remember that one time you tried to take that picture of your friends and your flash didn't go off and you deleted the picture... you know, because you have a digital camera? in chile, they don't delete that picture. in fact, they take 4 replacements and then upload all 5 to facebook. they don't choose the best one to upload, they upload accidental shots of the bathroom floor and then comment on them like they were some hilarious happenstance. they're the reason zuckerbag is buying up alaskan real estate to grow server gardens. these folk are only some 17,000,000 and they probably occupying near 50% of facebook's total hard disk.

this isn't me just hypothesizing by the way. facebook is a regular feature on the 10'clock news (chileans have a longer, though not more productive workday). just two weeks ago i snatched a student's free press newspaper during class (la hora) and the page one headline read "chile ranks fifth in world on facebook." i asked my students why the F the popularity of facebook was page one news and received an array of answers ranging from "we are a simple people" to "what?"

after some reflection i realized that it was an obvious headline choice. this country has a relatively small population and the fact that it ranks fifth in the world is quite substantial. if the whole country is batshit crazy over facebook, it'd be editorial lunacy to not publish such stats on the front page. from february 2007 to february 2008, during which time mark zuckerbeans introduced a spanish-language facebook format, the network's popularity in chile grew from a meagre 106,960 users to 2,456,480, a baffling 2,197% (article [spanish]). apologies to kanthi rameswaram, but i didn't even know percentages went that high. undoubtedly, since february of this year, the amount of chileans on facebook has continued to grow exponentially. such hysterics make the tragic declaration in the following chilean news clip that "not existing on facebook is like not existing at all" less surprising.

in the end this may be just another irrelevant ramble of a blog. a blogamble or ramblog if you will (should/can i patent these words?). but i gotta say i feel strongly about facebook. on the one hand, yes it's a great communication apparatus. i imagine i'll return to the states, miss the shit out of my little lunatics, and use the devilnetwork to k.i.t. (keep in touch, yo). at the same time, i think it's unhealthy that most people in fact use facebook to stalk, to covet, and to literally or figuratively masturbate. i've had four or five acquaintances and friends die over the past year and have seen people use this same tool to write creepy post mortem messages to the deceased. personally, i think that shit is whack and it makes me frequently consider ditching the beast altogether. i've already passed my username and password onto a trusted confidant in case i die a sudden death and don't have the chance to kill my account. please, if i die, don't write on my facebook wall. instead, take part in any of the following preferred activities:

1. run through the streets of your respective city naked screaming "poutine, shaving cream, 1,000 miles of margarine!!!"
2. visit my gravesite or the pacifc ocean and sing r. kelly's ignition remix.
3. find out who shot biggie
4. start the band i never did and sing the song i always should have
5. tell my mom she was always my #1 stunna

all that being said, i'll probably still end up deleting the facemails as they come, untagging the photos of my feet, approving all the requested friends, and replying fastidiously to every last message. why? because look at the sweet bastards...