In Desperation, Fight Naked.

I don't like the Facebook generation. I find that it is training people to detach themselves from one another by always feeling attached to one another. In the cases of those we have lost contact with, or those who are simply too far away to keep convenient contact with, this is both the venom and the serum. On the one hand, we have a means to communicate. On the other hand, we have already taken the substance out of what it means to communicate.

Thanks to the facebook mobile environment, all my friends are in my pocket throughout the course of the day. The incentive to actually make direct, intimate contact has become so white-washed by the ease with which I could potentially do so that it has sullied the title "friend" by virtue of its nature. The online generation has trained a country of mindless drones, programmed to broadcast themselves to the whole of society without actually thinking about the consequences of doing so, and the result is [somehow] a less real world.

Who are my friends? This is the question I seek to answer in my hiatus from photo uploading, tagging and commenting.
What are my friends to me? A question who's answer has never truly been known to me, much less has it remained relevant in the "new world" of cybertronic affection.

Whoever is [un]lucky enough to have the [dis]pleasure of reading this and working it through the bureacracy of management, marketing and the like, feel free to shoot me an email timvr@umich.edu [entertain my acting like you don't already have this information on record], as I'd love to hear whatever response it is you find appropriate. I feel like it's a conversation worth having, if nothing else.

to the Facebook Team:
Thank you for all the good times. This is not at all a stab at your ability to make an enjoyable experience, it is simply a young man's attempt to find his place in whatever is left in the world not bounded by an LCD monitor.

Taqee Vernon,
University of Michigan Undergraduate Student