Facebook Killed My Yearbook

The yearbook was not supposed to be a victim for Facebook.

We signed yearbooks knowing growing-up was part of the aesthetic value of a yearbook: that fragility of time and mortality of life were sewn into the spine of the book itself.

I was an editor of my high school yearbook. My fellow staffers and I would pour over each page checking for typos or incorrect spelling of students' names. Yearbook was an unpaid, thankless job. Holding my yearbook in my hands, I remember the 3-hour meeting simply for choosing the font of the cover text. Every yearbook spread was important because the entire student body of over 3,000 students would read the words and view the pictures. Every page needed to be perfect.

But even with my deep love and respect for "the yearbook" as an art form, it was only recently that I realized that Facebook has made my sacred text obsolete.

I remember my college friends leafing through the pages of my yearbook laughing at how fat I was, how strange my hair looked, or how thick my glasses were. There was something communal, almost tribal, about sitting around my yearbook and turning stiff immutable pages. With the physical book between us, I could tangibly express my memories, for a brief moment, to person who did not attend my high school.

But times have changed.

Where your yearbook is immutable, Facebook is dynamic. Where your yearbook is tribal, Facebook is high-tech. The yearbook is nostalgic Romanticism; Facebook is gritty Realism. Where once we would trace the outline of the prom queen's face with our fingertips on the page, Facebook accosts her by showing her fat and knocked up. Where once we could return to 1st period with our favorite teacher, Facebook ruins our flashback by showing him bald and senile.

If I wanted to see the kings and queen of my past dethroned, I would meet them in real life and view the moribund spectacle. But Facebook has encroached on my sanctuary and murdered my yearbook by bringing mortality onto my computer screen.

I don't want to foolishly live in the past with my yearbook, but I also don't want my memories desecrated by Facebook. But I have no vote; none of us do. It seems evolution has already chosen the terrifying sublimity of the present over the rosy perfection of the past.