Facebook addiction: A Survivor’s Tale Part 4

I hadn’t been to a real world party for ages. It seemed to take too long to travel across the city. Sitting in a steel cage with a bunch of strangers who were busy trying very hard not to acknowledge each other was just a bore. Not only that, but sometimes you’d have the tube train driver trying to compensate by being chirpy, as if excitedly announcing that the train ahead was 30 seconds late was somehow going to brighten your day or something. It was ridiculous. But I’d been invited, via Facebook (call it a perk of Facebook addiction), and this time I took the chance to go. I wouldn’t be away from my computer for too long, or so I thought.

The party was in north London, at the kind of place people who did proper jobs lived in. I mean, it was the kind of Georgian mansion block only a banker and related financial cronies could like. I thought it was a dump. And I took my cigarettes in, walking with a swagger that announced the arrival of a man with an enormous chip on his shoulder. There were smartly dressed people already talking to each other about some transaction, some bank going bust, some bonus going on a holiday flat somewhere. Interesting, I thought, and got to drinking. I figured I’d get wasted, get out of there, and back to my computer for my Facebook fix.

As soon as I arrive back home, I log back on to my Facebook account. My neighbour seems to be having a party, I can hear the voices in the background. They’re laughing and talking loudly, with Led Zeppelin playing not too loudly, but loud enough that I can hear it and make out that the song’s “Battle of Evermore”. But all this is subconscious – the only thing my mind is processing right now is the latest status updates, and the screen for Farmville that’s just starting up. Forget parties, Facebook addiction is just the cure for a dull Saturday night, or is it?