December 07, 2007

SuperPoke and the Meaning of Life

Those readers for whom social networking is not a way of life (are there really any of you out there?) will be forgiven if they do not understand the reference in the title, but I would think that the vast majority of people will at least be aware of the concept, if not active participants in its ever-growing popularity. Perhaps you even have an opinion on the topic. In the last few months since the SuperPoke Facebook application took off, I have heard assessments that run the gamut. To some, it is the next best thing since Al Gore invented the In-ter-net. To others, it is simply one more mindless and purposeless activity that has come to represent the worthlessness of the unwashed masses. Cynical readers will likely assume that mere invocation of worthless unwashed masses would draw me to that side of the argument like a moth to flame—or a fly to shit. Au contraire, ye of little faith!

Before I commence on a mostly incoherent, yet marvelously self-assured advocacy of the SuperPoking lifestyle, it might be worthwhile to discuss its predecessor in the social networking world: good ol' regular poke (hereinafter poke). Now, if memory serves, the poke feature was part of the original Facebook, or at least present when I joined over four¹ years ago. However, as far as I know, it served an entirely different purpose than does SuperPoke now, viz creepy nerd flirting.

What's that? the naïve reader with great fortune to have never spent any time in an engineering class, much less an engineering school, might ask. Well, say the year is 2004 and you are a weird, creepy, mostly non-functional human being who, while perhaps possessing superior intellect, are still so encumbered by your own prodigious awkwardness, that your only social interactions with the opposite sex since age 11 have involved you staring at their breasts while stammering incomprehensible gibberish. No, not me, assholes. I did not even discover girls until at least 13. Anyway, let's call you UCUG (short for U of C undergrad). Although it might be in society's best interest for UCUG to never reproduce, the birds and the bees cannot be stopped: UCUG has fallen madly in love with a completely unattainable woman (is there any other kind for him?). Of course, he does not attempt to talk to her. For one, that would be too normal. For another, it would be futile. Instead, he does the next best thing: he finds her on Facebook, and pokes her. What does that mean? she might wonder (it is 2004, after all, and poking is by no means commonplace). Thinly-veiled sexual innuendo, that's what! The best thing to happen to creepy nerd flirting since rags coated in chloroform (what?).

As I hope my (perhaps overly-descriptive) example demonstrates, poking in the old days was used as a come on. You only poked people, if at all, whom you liked—or at the very least, wanted to sleep with; poking anyone else might send a completely wrong signal. You know, like grabbing a friend's ass at a bar. In front of all your other friends. Even I, with my shocking inability to detect any sort of advance, would be confused by that one. Most people I spoke to about the subject at the time did not use the feature at all: (1) because it was stigmatized as being for weird, creepy dudes; (2) because the return on investment was low since it was so ambiguous; and (3) because if you wanted to sleep with someone, there were quicker ways of going about it than playing the digital equivalent of footsie. Incidentally, despite being in two or three (naturally failed) relationships (depending on your definition) in the time since I joined Facebook, I have never poked (or as far as I can tell, been poked) non-ironically.

SuperPoke changed everything. Sure, you could still use it for the purposes of creepy nerd flirting if you desired (such actions as kiss, hug, and grope make it very easy), but how about defenestration? I do not know of too many people outside the SF Folsom St. crowd that would find being thrown off a building to be sexy. The stigma was gone. The bar was lowered. With SuperPoke, you could still grope people you wanted to hook up with, but you could also headbutt people you were simply friends with. And all with neato icons, too! Suddenly taking sexy back from friends and foes alike was all the rage. Everyone was doing it.

Poking purists were not amused. What's the point? some asked. How meaningless, others fumed. To their credit, such sober-minded analysis is not without its merits. What is the point of throwing digital shit at other people? So everyone can see on Big Brother—I mean, News Feed—that you did? Could there be anything more useless and patently wasteful of resources than this abomination that is SuperPoke?

Yes. Life. To those who indignantly rage in self-righteous sanctimony over the SuperPoking phenomenon, I would ask you this: what's so different about that than what you do everyday? So much of what we do on a daily basis—perhaps everything—has no true purpose; it is hardly fair to accuse a Facebook application of being the epitome of meaninglessness. Why do people get married? Chances are, they will simply divorce 3–7 years later, having lost half of what they own, and with only two guaranteed to be traumatized children and years of therapy bills to show for it. Why even bother? Or better yet, why do we go to school? So we can earn more money? So we can buy better shit? But what will any of that mean on your deathbed? Is 40 years of pushing paper so someone you have never met can get obscenely rich and countless people you will never know can suffer in squalor worth that plasma television that will be outdated in 2 weeks or that luxury car that will lose $10–20K off the lot? If you think so, you are either deluded, stupid, or both.

Yes, SuperPoking is worthless. Yes, it serves no purpose. Yes, it is very likely a waste of everyone's time and energy. But chances are, so are you. And most certainly, so am I. So if it brings a little joy to someone else's (necessarily futile) existence, who are you—or am I, for that matter—to say otherwise? Life was meaningless before SuperPoke came about; its popularity now does not fundamentally alter the equation.

^ ¹ As a diligent reader rightly pointed out, I have in fact been on Facebook since mid-2003, which makes it four years. An earlier version of this entry suggested that I had been on the site for only three years. Time flies.