Nostalgia

For a brief moment whilst sitting in the bath last night, I considered rejoining Facebook. After about three seconds of contemplation, I decided against it. My original reason for leaving the site was because I felt I was allowing a website to dictate my personal and social interactions with a vast swathe of friends and more tragically, family members. Also, I spent a disproportionate (but probably not as much as the majority) amount of time looking through old posts, photos and statuses; reminiscing or feeling nostalgic.

There is a comforting warmth that comes with looking over tastefully edited Instagram photos, comments from friends and happy statuses.. But when this becomes a full time hobby; what value is given to nostalgia? Before Facebook, ("B.F." as it'll probably be referred to by future generations) did you spend every evening going through all of your old photo albums? I doubt it. The real question is how can you move forward and look forward to the future if you spend so much time looking backwards? Social media is not as a history lesson. The new Timeline feature on Facebook (which I haven't used but I've seen a demo of online) looks spectacular, but only serves to further meet the needs of the starry eyed.

Nostalgia is not what it used to be..

(This story on the Gizmodo site reinforces some of my points quite eloquently..)