When The Stones Aren’t a Rollin’ - Facebook is a Virtue

Ah yes, down time at RS. A breath of fresh air, a brief moment to stretch your legs and work out those hand cramps. Although slow days are few and far between, we interns still relish in well-deserved break time, but try our best to keep it short. In all honesty I find it difficult to pry myself away from Radiohead research and interview transcriptions with the likes of Robert Smith from The Cure, but every so often I might just have to get up to pee.

When I’m not drowning in the library archives or bogged down by hours of transcriptions, I’ll come up for air and surf, switching gears to my beloved Facebook. Having attempted to boycott such virtual bandwagons in the past - I finally caved. Ever since my last semester of college when I was distracted in lecture halls by hundreds of iBooks glowing with up and running MySpace pages, I vowed to swear off the addiction of the machine altogether. I firmly believed in real communication, until the day I discovered the beauty and essence of Facebook.

Transcribing interviews can be somewhat tedious and I find it important to open up new windows on my screen on a regular basis so as to not go cross-eyed. Not only is it fundamental to stop and crack your knuckles and rotate your wrists, carpel tunnel is very much a high risk in this business as tunnel vision is also a factor. Immersing myself into a Macintosh for eight hours a day can be grueling, that is, unless you’re actually writing, or unless you have Facebook.

Thank you Facebook pioneers for showing me the way and being the light at the end of my tunnel vision. If only you knew the true power with which you possess and the impact you’ve had on my cyber networking. Until I discovered downtime at RS I was subject to mere email alone as my tool to connect with the outside world. Nobody seems to call my cell anymore – my friends and family have realized I’m far too busy these days to answer, so I suppose they just gave up. But now that I have succumbed to Facebook and jumped on its’ bandwidth, it seems there’s no need for much else.

My Facebook page flourishes with tagged photos from friends and wall-to-wall posts and even some fellow Rolling Stoners themselves (don’t worry editors, your secret is safe with me). I frequently add links to my own personal blog (insert hyperlink here) as if I’m music’s answer to the next Perez Hilton. There are good times for Facebook and of course there are bad, especially if I’m sitting at the Intern desk in the editorial department right outside of Jann Wenner’s office. FYI, being busted for exploiting company time for personal use by said Editor-in-Chief is probably not the best way to get him to notice you.