Change

[in reply to this post at Dangerousmeta]

The thing about Facebook...

...it magnifies the tension between Change and Stasis.

Walk with me...

We all hate Change, and we all complain about Stasis. If Facebook had been designed by someone *not* autistic, it may have included built-in means for firewalling our social networks.

Y'know, like we used to. Can we even remember what that's like?

Instead, all these social networks are suddenly laid bare (to some extent.) Getting into new networks is the recipe for Change.

Many academics and career counselors observe this inertia and conclude
that the problem lies in basic human motives: We fear change, lack readiness,
are unwilling to make sacrifices, sabotage ourselves. [...]

Indeed, the conventional wisdom on how to change careers is in
fact a prescription for how to stay put. The problem lies in our methods, not
our motives. [...]

To make a break with the past, we must venture into unknown networks –
and not just for job leads. Often it is strangers who are best equipped to help
us see who we are becoming. [...]

Trigger events don’t just jolt us out of our habitual routines,they are the necessary
pegs on which to hang our reinvention stories. Arranging life events
into a coherent story is one of the subtlest, yet most demanding, challenges of
career reinvention. To reinvent oneself is to rework one’s story.

Herminia Ibarra: How to Stay Stuck in the Wrong Career - Harvard Business Review

Ibarra is writing about careers, but she really means "life."

Joe Rogan touches on this concept of one's story, too:

Facebook collapses all the investments we have in multiple identities to multiple groups (again look who developed the application in first place...) which means the moment we start adding friends, we have to start rewriting our story, and by proxy, reinvent ourselves.

Worse, every time we look at the site, we're confronted with others reinventing themselves more successfully than we are.

This is incredibly stressful, and if we're not equipped to perceive/discuss this phenomenon, we're carrying some invisible anxiety.

TL;DR: Some loners with Aspergers created a website that makes money by inventorying the behaviors of narcissists.