美式发音 适合精听
在众人的眼里,骨灰级的社交网站成员通常都会是死硬派。那究竟是什么原因让脸谱网的一名资深成员下决心退出呢?各位看官,在你成为社交网迷之前,你不可不知啊。
One of those big social networking sites, Facebook, has attracted over 58 million members. Commentator Melody Kramer is no longer one of them.
Melody: I deleted all 1,281 of my co-workers, second-grade classmates and people who I don’t know at all. I shut down my account, completely. I’m 23, and I’ve been on Facebook since March of 2004, which makes me one of the website’s earliest users.
At first, I used it obsessively. If I had a free moment, I’d logged on to see whether my friends had updated their profiles. I’d sit alone scrolling through these updates and then run into someone at a coffee shop and have nothing to say because I already knew everything about them, and they knew everything about me.
In November, I went to my five-year high school reunion and was not pleasantly surprised. Lauren became a model, Josh went to law school, Dina was a teacher. I hadn’t talk to any of them since graduation, but I knew exactly what they were doing, both now and last week. But lately, I’m overwhelmed. Facebook opened up to everyone, not just college students, and my co-workers started to join, which meant they now knew what I was doing when I wasn’t at work.
And as a rule: You can NOT friend your co-workers because then they’ll ask you the next day: But I thought we were friends. And you are friends but not the kind of friends who tell each other what they do outside of work. So now the people you work with can see what you did last night, and you’re constantly worrying what people might say about what you did last night instead of actually doing anything tonight.
So I quit. I became a 23-year-old 1)Luddite. I’ve returned to how the world worked when I was 20, before I knew when my friends and co-workers were counting down the seconds to vacation or 2)wistful or entering a complicated relationship. I’m hoping life will be a lot simpler now. People will be more mysterious now that I actually have to talk to them to find out their favorite books or hobbies or 3)neurosis. I don’t know when my college roommate goes to the supermarket, and I think I’m a better person for not knowing. In fact, you could say getting off a social network was the best thing I’ve done this week.
脸谱网是几大社交网站之一,它拥有成员超过五千八百万。不过,评论员梅洛迪·克莱默已经不再是他们的一份子了。
梅洛迪:我删去了上面的1281人,包括我的同事、小学二年级的同学和那些我一点儿都不了解的人。我完全彻底地关闭了我的账户。我今年23岁,我从2004年3月起在脸谱网注册,这也让我成为这个网站最早的用户之一。
一开始,我对这个网站着了迷。只要一有空,我就会登陆看看我的朋友有没有更新他们的档案。我会一个人坐在那儿,滚动着鼠标,查阅更新的消息。随后,我会在咖啡厅里碰到某个人,但却无话可说,因为我对他们都了如指掌,而他们对我也一样。
在11月,我参加了一个高中毕业五周年的同学聚会,但没有任何惊喜。劳伦当了模特,乔希去上法学院,迪娜当了老师。毕业后我没有跟他们说过一句话,但我了解他们今天和上周所做的一切。但最近,我有点儿受不了了。脸谱网对所有人开放,不再局限于大学生。于是,我的同事也加入了这个网站,也就是说,现在他们知道我在不上班的时候都做些什么。
有这样一条原则:你不能跟同事成为朋友,不然他们会在第二天问你:我还以为我们是朋友呢。你跟同事确实是朋友,但不是那种相互告知彼此下班都做了些什么的朋友。可是有了脸谱网,同事们就会知道你昨晚都干了什么,于是你不停地担心他们会怎样谈论你昨晚做的事情,结果今晚什么也做不成。
于是,我退出了。我成了一个只有23岁,却强烈反对科技进步的人。我又回到了我20岁时的那个世界。那个时候,我不知道我的朋友或者同事在度假前的倒数精确到分秒,不知道他们心中的渴望,不知道他们正开始一段复杂的情感。我希望生活从今往后会变得简单得多。既然现在我要跟他人交谈才会知道他们喜欢看什么书,他们的爱好是什么,他们害怕什么,这样,他们于我就更有神秘感。我再也不会知道我大学时的室友什么时候去超市,我觉得不知道会让我感觉更自在些。你甚至可以说退出社交网站是我这周做的最了不起的一件事。
栏目翻译:旭文