By Kristen Ace Nevarez, Senior Staff Columnist
I currently have an active Twitter, Facebook, Google Mail account and cell phone.
While one might try to give 100 seemingly valid reasons why one person requires four modes of electronic expression, there is only one: Validation.
That’s right, it’s cheap therapy, plain and simple. Wherever I am on the planet, I can articulate my personal, innermost thoughts and desires for the world at large to respond “Aw! I’m sorry! You’re the best! Let’s get lunch!”
For anyone older than 49: Facebook is a social networking website where people can post life updates for all of their electronic friends, classmates, acquaintances, exes, “frenemies,” parents, parents’ nosy friends and coworkers to see.
This includes, but is not limited to: what you ate for lunch, a Top 40 song lyric that describes exactly how your romantic relationship is progressing, the fact you just worked out, what is on television and whether you just felt an earthquake.
The average person’s mundane thought is not really good enough for an actual conversation starter or individually select text; therefore, we clutter cyberspace in the hopes that one of our electronic friends, classmates, acquaintances, exes, “frenemies,” parents, parents’ nosy friends or coworkers will validate us and say, “Yes. I ‘Like’ that thought you had.” Then we can feel our life has approval and therefore meaning. Amen.
Thanks Mark Zuckerberg.
On a sidenote, if everything in “The Social Network” is true, and I assume it is, Zuckerberg is awesome. Therefore I spend a lot of time on my own Facebook page trying to make myself seem cooler and prettier than I actually am.
This is so when we fortuitously meet at a cocktail party I can charm him with my sparkling wit so he will be intrigued, find me on Facebook and “poke” me, message me, chat me, ask me out, date me, break up with me, regret it at 3:24 a.m. on a Tuesday, ask for me back, date me, ask to go exclusive, meet my parents, marry me and we can begin our white picket fence, golden retriever, 2.5 kids life together until the ugly divorce when I make more money than him and he feels emasculated.
This, too, would validate me.
For anyone older than 49:
Twitter is like Facebook except your status can’t be more than 140 characters. It has fewer users, probably because it’s hard to concisely validate someone. #getit?
Texting
For anyone older than 59: Texting is when you use both thumbs on a cell phone’s tiny keypad in order to send a 160-character sentiment and deteriorate the English language.
Texting is validating because one can write: “Today sux colon hyphen left parenthesis” and your friend will say, “Aw! Let’s go get ice cream! semicolon hyphen right parenthesis.”
The other wonderful perk texting allows is the ability to look busy and popular at any given time. While our parents stood awkwardly next to the party punch bowl attempting to make their glasses last as long as possible, we 21st Century Jetsons now have the ability to pull out our phones and appear to be deep in an important text conversation.
Unlike most of my generation, I didn’t want a cell phone or a puppy. I realized early in life both are expensive and time-consuming responsibilities that die easily. I changed my mind when I got texting. This was because I liked a boy and sometimes he texted me. There is nothing more validating than an unsolicited text giving you the romantic leverage, which leads me to e-mail.
Drunken texts are humorous, but there is nothing more validating than a drunken e-mail.
For my readers older than the age of 180, a drunken e-mail is a drawn-out, painful autopsy of your dead relationship from your ex. (For comparison’s sake: Our parents drunk-dialed and their parents drunk-walked-to-their-house-and-knocked-on-the-door. Our kids will probably drunk- teleport.)
Receiving the drunk e-mail is the chance for you to spin in your computer chair singing, “We knew that he’d regret it” to the tune of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” and revel in your own personal awesomeness. You may even forward it to your sassy best friend so she can say, “See girl, I told you he’d regret it.”
Print and save.
I don’t know who to blame for our generation’s insatiable craving for validation. Is it the parents who started giving trophies to every soccer player? Is it the principal who started a fifth-grade graduation ceremony? I blame everyone who didn’t vote on Proposition 19. That’s trendy, right?
—Kristen Ace Nevarez is a theater arts senior and the only thing she needs to validate is her parking stub … But you can Facebook message her if you like her column.
—This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Daily Aztec.
