As a man who has also deleted his facebook account before, i have strong sympathies for Scrutons behalf. like me, Scruon believes that quality in a relationship is far better than quantity, and the social networking sites that precious quality in the very definition of "Friendship". unlike real life, at least half of your friends are either people you don't care about anymore or people that you have never met before face to face. you don't really interact with these people, and therefore have nothing to really base your relationship on other than a a few hobbbies and some half-truths they post. by meeting people in rel life, you create a relationship that is stronger and more meaningful than anything you could ever have online. thats why many people delete their Facebook accounts; the friendships aren't real enough, and therefore do not fulfill their social desires. because all you ever see of a person is their profile picture and their recent posts with an emoticon at the end, the interactions mean little, because you aren't really there with them.
1 comment:
The point of quality over quantity is obvious, but I think the counterpoint to that is that we still interact with people everyday and meet new people (think of those first couple weeks of freshmen year). Facebook just gives us an opportunity to reach out to even more people than before. So what if 1 out of every 500 people you newly meet on Facebook turn out to be your true friend... that's one more friend than you had before.
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