I-FACE-YOU

Friends, let's abandon that empty Facebook phrase "friend", so out-moded, watered down, and divorced from its pre-Facebook usage as to render any dissatisfaction, debate, or disgust with its fallen state as pointless, and pointlessly antiquarian as the preference of a pre-Lapsarian Adam over all subsequent generations of Man. In its stead, let us adopt--nay, recognize--as our own, cuddle and coo over, the "face", an offspring long before us, all this time staring us in the face (pardon the pun) but not given its due filial care. Leave off saying you will friend someone; rather, promise to face them.

Consider my face: the least arbitrary sign of an Individuality. Faces are easier to remember, and more consistent in denotation than names. Names, subject to change and, though called proper, common, inflict a denotation as imprecise as the detonation of a hand grenade. Faces, rather than names, are more congenial a gift; congenital, furthermore, rather than inherited or bestowed as names are, and thus more properly proper to an Individuality; deeper, too, and more radiant and expressive than a name could ever hope to be. How arbitrary the name! How improper is the proper name; erected by thousands, perhaps even millions, before and after me, as if they were engraved stone tablets, raised to resist, perhaps even to deny, the winds of Time; eroding, nevertheless, slowly burning, stinging sensitive noses with the reek of hubris. My face...now, my face is a creature of Time, etched and soon enough destroyed by Time; my face testifies to Time. Where else but in the face of those we love can we witness changes in the periphery but perceive that recognizable core remaining?

A face is a public signature. It is more recognizable than a name. A face is immediately apparent, and instantly enigmatic. In the self-same repetition of the face, Individuality presents its self. "Wait!" you might cry. "What about twins?" To which I would reply: "So? Better to be confused with one other human than with the thousands who share my name. My name: a syringe passed around a heroine den.

To be faced in Facebook signifies, first of all, public presentation and recognition. The format of Facebook reifies a simple truth: as one is recognized and granted entry into a web of relationships, that entry is symbolized by a name and by a picture--and the picture is always bigger and more prominent than the name. And participants in this web of relationships take more care in selecting the image than the name, especially given the picture can be changed to fit expressive needs, while the name is fixed to such a degree that to change it requires deletion of the account. Even as the image, the face, is changed, it is precisely in change identity is preserved; malleable, it clings rather than crumbles; expressive, it desires rather than demands. In a sense, this act of facing someone renders them in the web of relationships constituting your profile or, should I say, your face. "I will face you" means "I will give you a face in my web of relations. Others in my web will recognize you." Identity affirmed--Identity repeated, II--allows humans to feel better about themselves; public confirmation reinforces Identity. Facebook's format mirrors, however unintentionally, these structures of human relationships. Implicit in this format is the fact that our Indivisible Individuality (this "aye, aye," or "yes, yes" of the II) is nothing more, nor less, than those others we have granted access to our lives.

To face someone grants them access to your personal page, allowing them to post messages, and etc., on your wall, and to have their scribbles on other faces become a part of your face. Your profile grows with each post from your other (friends') faces. Who you are is more interesting peppered with their faces than with your face alone. It is, then, an act of final recognition, of self-identification--one could hazard faith--to say "You are my face."

We cannot elide, much less ignore, the knowledge that to face someone is, as commonly understood, to stand opposite them, face-to-face, to confront them, as it were, with your undeniable presence. Maurice Blanchot of The Unavowable Community claims our place in a community, our sense of Identity, is formed more by confrontation than be acceptance. Blasé acceptance is a corrosive form of neglect, contributing nothing to a person, instead denying opportunities for change: "Left on its own, a being closes itself, falls asleep and clams down. A being is either alone or knows itself to be alone only when it is not." Can anyone, recalling those long silent Facebook faces, claim they have not felt an unease, at its heart the fear of being left alone?

Shining light on this face of face only diverts attention from those negative connotations lurking 'round the periphery. Yet the concept of face--the face, if you will, of my face--depends as much on the negative as on the positive to maintain its signification changing (i.e., living). To the negative, let us direct this Apollonian light.

"Face, motherfucker!" that red-headed stepchild Denny Gamroth shouted, having just yanked my pants down from behind, so my tidy-whitties were on full display at the center of our crowded middle school hallway. Vicious glee filled his voice. Boys brayed and girls tittered, even my goddess Renee, despite, or perhaps because of, my crimson face and teary eyes. Why was I never able to purge this memory? Was it because, after all these years, this face, this declaration of superiority over me, would find place in this essay? Have all my efforts been nothing more than attempts to save face, nothing but elaborate, long-delayed comebacks? Compelled by the need to overcome this word benign in all other ways, forced upon me, extrinsic to my identity, to become intrinsic to, inextricable from, how the student body viewed me, their eyes filter through Denny's face, I have soldiered on to a new understanding: How much more a part of that body had my face become. No longer did I dwell in the bland pathos of anonymity. I had been pulled by the face into the Olympian heights of celebrity.

Face positive and face negative, to which we must needs pile on signification, as a mortician applies make-up to a revenant, hoping to find himself. To affix the reducing prefix de-, to render face deface--to deface face while simultaneously leaving the face as perfectly apparent as before--initially presents the sense of face just described: that damaging of public property. As we have seen, such defacement renders said property more recognizable, albeit as property (de)faced. In Facebook, the verb "to deface" makes more sense--is more sensible--than the verb "to defriend". We can defriend someone who was never actually a friend, but we can never deface someone who was never a face, positive or negative.

II threaten to deface you rather than defriend you. To remove you from my Facebook removes you from my (online, because I seem to have no community offline) web of inter-relationships erases your face from the inter-actions constituting my face's profile, yet this defacement threatens to affect me more than you, because I, too, two, will be defaced as, literally, your face is removed from my profile, crossing out a part of my identity. And some of you might think: "So what?" And I would agree, remembering we were never close enough to begin; yet, the threat to deface someone is infected by the sensibility of damaging public property, which, tellingly, is more feared, and therefore more criminal, than defriending someone. If the relationship had been rich or perhaps even redolent with interplay,t he defacement represents significant loss. In those relationships where little or no interaction transpired, little damage will seem to have been done, though damage does occur déjà. Perhaps change, not damage, is the more fitting term. Regardless, I carry this threat forward.

I will soon deface some of you. I have faced you with this message. You have one week to face me yourself, or deface me, before I deface you. If you do decide to deface me first, I commend the assertiveness and attention which has, heretofore, lurked in abeyance. Thank you.