The Social Network is an intentional fable. An exaggerated tale of Facebook’s origins that is meant to reveal something very important about our own lives.

In the film, we criticize Mark Zuckerberg for his pride and hubris, when in reality it’s his insecurity that drives him towards irreverent behavior. He is so self-loathing that he ends up sacrificing all his REAL friends for millions of FAKE ones. Ironically, our current culture faces a similar identity crisis. 

Many of us are so obsessed with how we are perceived by others that we end up spending countless hours uploading and updating our profiles in order to appear more interesting. More fun. More successful. More sexually appealing. 



We work for more notifications. More Likes, more comments, more followers, more ADMIRATION. 

We pity Zuckerberg for failing to realize what he is losing in the process and never stop to consider that we might be doing something quite similar.

Instead of having REAL relationships, we now COLLECT relationships. Instead of updating to connect with others, we update to be complimented by others.

On Tumblr, we devour more reblogs than we can possibly digest. On Foursquare, we brag to the world how “busy” we are. On Yelp, we showcase the various food joints we’ve been to. On Twitter, we seek to display our witty intellect in 140 characters or less. On Facebook, we do ALL OF THE ABOVE.

At the end of the day, all this technological advancement isn’t a bad thing. Without it, we would’ve never met some of the amazing people we know now. Without it, promoting important events would be a HUGE pain in the bum. Without it, you wouldn’t even be reading these words.

However, it is important that we stop to examine the motives behind our posts: Are we really doing all of this to share and connect with others? OR is there a deep-seated obsession hidden beneath our good intentions?

Are we really as happy, content, and interesting as our photo albums portray? Are we really as busy as our check-ins imply?

With all of this “Identity Editing,” are we any closer to knowing who we REALLY are? What we really want? What our purpose in life is? 

What’s driving YOU to update so much?