This might hurt your feelings, but I'm just going to come out and say it: I don't care about your Facebook history.
For its 10th anniversary, Facebook came out with a new feature called "A Look Back." It's a slideshow of a smattering of photos from your life on Facebook set to sweeping, inspirational music. It's meant to induce feelings, and maybe for some it does. I'm an emotional person, but I can honestly say that I wasn't moved in any way while watching the personalized video of my life pass before my eyes.
So stop sharing your Look Back videos on Facebook.
If you're a close friend, odds are I shared a good deal of that history with you. In that case: I don't want to see it. I was there. I don't even want to watch my Facebook Look Back video. Why should I have to see yours?
If you're just an acquaintance, then I probably don't know you well enough to recognize the people in your photos or the milestones you've reached. I don't have the time or energy to watch some video of you and your friends graduating from high school, gettin' down at frat parties and moving to the big city. Does this make me a bad person?
I'm not the only one who feels this way. Tech journalist Farhad Manjoo agrees with me:
Here are the feelings you're likely to feel while observing your younger self in this video: embarrassment and boredom. My video is just a whole bunch of photos of me and my friends at college formals. Snooze. Maybe in your video, you're passed out pantsless on the floor. Awkward. Either way, it's not the heartstring-tugging nostalgiafest that Facebook wanted.
Because guess what? The real, important, beautiful things in life that will really make your heart hurt didn't happen on Facebook. They (hopefully) happened out in the real world, and, for better or worse, those memories belong to you and only you.
I'm already bombarded with a whole lot of stuff I don't want to see on my Facebook timeline. Between ads, videos of your little cousin's dance recital and creepy photos of your ultrasound, I'm already having a difficult enough time navigating through Facebook to see things I'm actually interested in without having to watch a sappy video about your adolescence.
Am I a hater? Perhaps. But as the ancient saying goes: "Haters gonna hate."
For its 10th anniversary, Facebook came out with a new feature called "A Look Back." It's a slideshow of a smattering of photos from your life on Facebook set to sweeping, inspirational music. It's meant to induce feelings, and maybe for some it does. I'm an emotional person, but I can honestly say that I wasn't moved in any way while watching the personalized video of my life pass before my eyes.
So stop sharing your Look Back videos on Facebook.
If you're a close friend, odds are I shared a good deal of that history with you. In that case: I don't want to see it. I was there. I don't even want to watch my Facebook Look Back video. Why should I have to see yours?
If you're just an acquaintance, then I probably don't know you well enough to recognize the people in your photos or the milestones you've reached. I don't have the time or energy to watch some video of you and your friends graduating from high school, gettin' down at frat parties and moving to the big city. Does this make me a bad person?
I'm not the only one who feels this way. Tech journalist Farhad Manjoo agrees with me:
I don't want to see your Lookback video.
-- Farhad Manjoo (@fmanjoo) February 5, 2014Here are the feelings you're likely to feel while observing your younger self in this video: embarrassment and boredom. My video is just a whole bunch of photos of me and my friends at college formals. Snooze. Maybe in your video, you're passed out pantsless on the floor. Awkward. Either way, it's not the heartstring-tugging nostalgiafest that Facebook wanted.
Because guess what? The real, important, beautiful things in life that will really make your heart hurt didn't happen on Facebook. They (hopefully) happened out in the real world, and, for better or worse, those memories belong to you and only you.
I'm already bombarded with a whole lot of stuff I don't want to see on my Facebook timeline. Between ads, videos of your little cousin's dance recital and creepy photos of your ultrasound, I'm already having a difficult enough time navigating through Facebook to see things I'm actually interested in without having to watch a sappy video about your adolescence.
Am I a hater? Perhaps. But as the ancient saying goes: "Haters gonna hate."