Status Anxiety Via Status Updates
現況更新帶來現況焦慮
By Anita Patil

“I don't really like my friends,” complains Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) in the 1989 film “Heathers,” a cult classic about cliques, suicide and jocks in high school. Jason Dean (Christian Slater) responds: “I don’t really like your friends either.”
在1989年的「希德姊妹幫」這部陳述中學生結黨、自殺與情色的高人氣經典電影中，劇中人維羅妮卡．莎威爾（薇諾娜．賴德飾）曾抱怨道，「我其實並不喜歡我的那些朋友」。劇中人傑森．狄恩（克莉絲汀．史萊特飾）答道：「說真的，我也不喜歡你那些朋友。」

Those lines were spoken long before Facebook or Foursquare. Imagine how we feel now, when we are bombarded by our friends’ thoughts, feelings, desires and destinations through a constant stream of status updates, links, tweets and photos. Jealousy, annoyance and resentment can bubble up.
這番對話比「臉書」或「四方」要早上好些個年頭。如今我們每天經由網路不斷流入現況更新、連接、推文及照片，飽受朋友們各種想法、感情、渴望及旅遊地點的疲勞轟炸，可以想像我們當下的感覺。種種猜忌、煩惱及憎厭，簡直就要把人氣爆了。

“I had to stop following certain friends because I was constantly seeing them tweet about all the parties that I wasn’t invited to!” Laurie David, an author and Hollywood producer, told The Times.
作家兼好萊塢製片人勞瑞．大衛對紐約時報記者說：「我必須放棄某些朋友，因為我經常看到他們在推文中提到各種聚會，卻從未邀請我。」

A study in January in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the happier they perceived their friends to be and the sadder they felt as a consequence.
元月號「網路科技、行為與社群網路」月刊有份研究報告發現，在「臉書」上花的時間越長，越覺得朋友們快樂，到頭來自己會越感傷。

Why are you at home when social networking alerts inform you that your friends are at a bar or restaurant? Feelings of anxiety, regret and inadequacy flare up, a combination that Jenna Wortham of The Times describes as FOMO, or “fear of missing out.”
當社群網站通知你，你的朋友此刻在酒吧或餐廳裡時，你怎麼還坐在家裡？憂鬱、遺憾及不適的感覺使你肝火上衝，五味雜陳的心理正如同紐約時報記者珍娜．沃珊所說的FOMO，即「擔心被落掉」。

The billions of updates can provide amusing, or often irritating, glimpses into the activities of friends, enemies, colleagues and exes. Baby videos, vacation photos and political statements you don’t agree with can feel force-fed. So just defriend, right?
無窮無盡的訊息更新，能夠為你提供朋友、敵人、同事及已分手的情人伴侶在各種活動中，令你愉悅，或往往讓你惱火的點點滴滴。嬰兒的影片，假期出遊的照片，以及你不敢苛同的政治表態，讓你有成為「填鴨」的感覺。所以乾脆來個請息交以絕遊，對吧？

We do it in real life. Psychologists consider it an inevitable life stage where people achieve enough maturity and self-awareness to know who they are and what they want, and which friends deserve attention and which don’t, The Times reported. The pruning process even has a clinical name: socioemotional selectivity theory.
時報在報導中指出，我們在真實生活中就是如此。心理學家認為這是一種不可避免的人生階段，人們此時已夠成熟，有足夠的自我意識，知道自己是誰，自己想要的又是什麼，那些朋友值得重視，那些不必甩。這種篩選過程甚至還有個臨床醫學上的名稱：社會情緒選擇理論。

But online, many find it hard to resist going through, well, other people’s stuff. “I had this bizarre, voyeuristic habit of scrolling through people’s travel photos online and then feeling like, ‘Why haven’t I walked the Great Wall of China?’ And guilt: ‘I should be taking my son to Spain.’ I don’t even like to travel!” Laura Zigman, a novelist, told The Times.
但是在網路上，許多人發現很難抗拒瀏覽他人丟上網的東西。作家蘿拉．席格曼對紐約時報記者說，「我有這種怪異、近乎偷窺狂似的習慣，在網路上掃過別人的出遊照片，然後想到『我怎麼就沒上過萬里長城？』。還會自責的想：『我應該帶兒子去西班牙玩』。我甚至根本不喜歡旅遊。」

But users aren’t just aggravating one another; the negative feelings extend to the creators of the software. Feeling jilted after Facebook filed for one of the most lucrative initial public offerings in history, some were asking, Where’s my cut? “Without me, and the other 844,999,999 people poking, liking and sharing on the site, Facebook would look ... bleak, desolate and really quite sad,” Nick Bilton wrote in The Times.
然而並非只是網站用戶彼此激怒而已；不爽的感覺還延伸到這套軟體的創始人那裡。當「臉書」提出有史以來最有賺頭之一的股票首次上市申請時，有些人在問，我的一份在哪裡？比爾頓投書紐約時報說道：「要是沒有我和其他844,999,999個人在網上閒逛、提供喜好及分享，臉書看起來會非常乏味、荒蕪，而且真的很讓人傷感。」

One commenter on Mark Zuckerberg’s page after the I.P.O. filing, wrote: “Why open Facebook stocks just for the Elite! Give the opportunity to all that helped you make facebook what it is today!”
在「臉書」提出上市申請後，一位評論者在祖克柏的網頁上寫道：「臉書的股票為何只提供給菁英份子！把機會給那些幫助你讓臉書能有今天的人吧！」

Jaron Lanier, an “innovator in residence” at the University of Southern California, worries about companies like Facebook and Twitter not paying their users while their employees get rich from free user-generated content. He told The Times that this process will leave society divided and distorted.
南加大「駐校創新家」藍尼爾對「臉書」、「推特」這種企業不回饋用戶，卻讓員工靠用戶免費提供的內容發財深以為憂。他對紐約時報說，這種過程會使社會分裂且扭曲。

If it isn’t already. Are we approaching the brink of one status update too many? Kevin Systrom, the chief executive of Instagram, a photo-sharing application, told The Times: “We as humans can only process so much data.”
就算還沒到此地步，但我們是否已有更新現況過度頻繁之嫌？Instagram照片分享應用軟體公司執行長對紐約時報說：「身為人類，我們只能處理這麼多資料。」

And so many friends.
以及這麼多的朋友。

原文參照：？

2012-03-06聯合報/G9版/UNITEDDAILYNEWS 任中原譯原文參見紐時週報二版左