The Language of Fakebook
By Katie Roiphe in The New York Times
Published: August 13, 2010

Left  - Erin Schrode and Hannah Grosman, “stars” in “My Darklyng.” Photo credit - Erin Schrode

I have a feeling that if Andy Warhol were alive he would be spending the summer writing a novel that takes place in real time on Facebook. In that spirit, Lauren Mechling and Laura Moser have been writing a clever serialized novel on Slate called “My Darklyng.” Their innovation: the plot unfolds not just in text but on Facebook and Twitter.

For the purposes of what they affectionately call their “gonzo art project,” the veteran young-adult novelists Ms. Mechling and Ms. Moser created a fake Facebook page for their main character, 16-year-old Natalie Pollock. What’s fascinating is that Natalie’s page may seem fake and stilted and artificial, but only in the way all teenagers’ Facebook pages seem fake and stilted and artificial.

Which is to say “My Darklyng” offers a brilliant commentary on how fictional teenagers are on Facebook. Their stylized, mannered projections of self are as invented as any in a novel. There are regional differences, of course, to the mannerisms but there are certain common tics: Okayyyyyyyyy. Ahhhhhhh. Everything is extreme: So-and-so “is obsessed with.” So-and-so “just had the longest day EVERRRRRR.” They are in a perpetual high pitch of pleasure or a high pitch of crisis or sometimes just a high pitch of high pitch. Holden Caulfield might have called it “phoniness.”

A 14-year-old I talked to about this sent me a message that pretty much sums it up: “I write more enthusiastically on Facebook than I actually am in real life. Like if I see something remotely funny I might say ‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA,’ when really there is no expression on my face.”

Another girl tells me she spends one, or maybe three, or maybe six hours a day on Facebook. She gets updates and messages to her phone during the school day, when she is not on summer vacation, hanging out on Facebook the way some people in a quaint and distant era might have hung out at a pool. It would be hard to say exactly how much time we are talking about, but suffice it to say: it’s a lot of time.

In the dark, medieval days before the Internet, teenagers were forced to scribble their stagiest experiments in self-hood in journals and notebooks, or to express themselves through their clothes.
The full story at NYT