Fakebook (33 page)

It's 9:00 p.m. on a perfect, spring Saturday night. Clear skies, seventy degrees, and the whole of New York has that energy that comes from that first nice day after a long winter. It's obvious. I can even see it from New Jersey.

In town for a visit, I'm spending my night on my parents' couch with the television on in the background and my new iPad on my lap. I scroll through Facebook posts and posts on the half-dozen other mainstream social media platforms that have emerged since I ended my fictional journey.

People are checking into the newest bars on FourSquare. I'm reading celebratory tweets with hashtag-based humor. I'm looking at their Instagram photos of overgarnished cocktails and fancy desserts. I recognize some of their outfits—all pinned on Pinterest a week in advance. I parrot to myself a sentiment I've heard over and over in the hundreds of articles, editorials, and films I've absorbed since this became one of the focuses of my life.

“We've never been more connected, yet never more isolated.”

It's a clean statement that reveals irony. It has a nice symmetry—a simplicity of concept that has all the affectations of being profound. It sounds right. And when the only thing illuminating the room is the ambient light of social media posts from a Saturday night I'm not a part of, it almost feels true.

Then I take another look at the posts. People are out drinking and dancing. They are meeting, breaking up, having fun, being miserable. They are making mistakes, taking chances, backing down, and stepping up. They are getting into messes. People continue to live their lives.

I realize what a fool's errand it is to try to sum up the social media experience in a single, universal statement. Facebook hasn't built walls between us; it's built roads. Social media is driven by people, and people are complex. And that complexity only grows when we cross one another's paths. The landscape we cross has clearly changed, and new rules and new behaviors are emerging out of it—but these new roads still lead us to one another.

I pick up my iPad and look at my list of Facebook friends. My eyes linger on those who were such a big part of that strange six-month experience but have since faded from my life. I know that Dhara moved out of New York and is dating someone new. I know that Juror 10 had a creme brulee at a nice restaurant with her sister. I know that Elliott likes to post open-ended musings, and that Kate Moulton just went to a costume party—not as an Amish girl.

And I'm still struck by how much emotion these images and a handful of short statements can stir in me. Sure, it's minutiae—but those little details do matter. Community is a mosaic of branching out lives—and your news feed is a reminder that other people's stories don't end just because we stopped sharing a stage.

But it's just a hint—an unreliable, easily manipulated, heavily spun posting from an author with an agenda. We'll only know as much as their protagonist tells us and what we can infer. In some ways that's so little; in some ways that's so much.

I scroll down a little farther and come across the profile picture of someone who learned this lesson well. In the picture he's walking away, while his one-year-old son on his shoulders looks back toward the camera with a little smirk. As an image, it has right amount of mystery and mischief that I'd expect from Matt Campbell—my secret foil.

It's appropriate that his back is to me. I can never know what struggles and triumphs exist behind his profile—the depth of the things he doesn't care to share. And ten years ago, I never could. But a post is just one click away from becoming a conversation.

It's still early. I'll see if he's around.

I park my parents' Saturn between an Italian sports car and a pickup truck and cut through the back entrance to the Dublin House, that inimitable bar within a house. I pass through the Saturday-night crowd at the main bar and take a quick look in the adjacent living room, with its leather chairs around the big fireplace. I walk past the main staircase to the second floor and out the front door.

Sitting on the brick patio out front, I see someone who for months had the better of me.

“Matt Campbell,” I say.

“What's good, buddy?”

He stands up, and we do the classic “dude hug.”

“How've you been?” I say. “How are Kristen and the baby?”

“Yeah man, things are great. Kristen is doing well,” he says. “And Shane's getting big. It's crazy how it goes.”

“I know. I saw the pics on Facebook. It's nuts…”

“Speaking of pics on Facebook,” Matt says, “…did you really meet Springstein?”

“
Yes
!
” I say with a laugh. “It's killer! My credibility is completely shot.”

I make light of my credibility, but it's more than a little bit true. Fakebook has become my identity—for its audacity and for people's personal relationship with it. People are eager to share their experience—when they first saw it, what they thought of me as it was happening, whether they thought it was funny or if it made them angry.

To my relief, Elliott's arc was fairly common—people went from disbelief to anger to appreciation in a quick span of time. Sure, I got a handful of “fuck you's” like I'd expected, but mostly people were more interested in why they'd believe it than why I'd do it.

“At least you didn't photoshop highlights into Bruce's hair,” Matt says with a laugh.

“I've learned my lesson,” I joke back. “That still cracks me up…Of all the ridiculous things I posted, it was the peroxide in Amish Kate's hair that did me in.”

“Credit goes to my wife for spotting that,” he says. We both laugh at the sheer dude-ness of my oversight. Apparently Amish girls don't do highlights.

We order a round and begin the enjoyable process of catching up. It's a gutsy thing he's doing—leaving his steady job as a CT technologist in New Jersey and moving to Ohio to be near his wife's family and opening an artisanal coffee-roasting company.

I ask him about the kind of place he wants to open, and he tells me all about his vision for Branch Street. He speaks passionately about his philosophy on roasting and the history he's eager to be part of. He tells me about the experiences when he first discovered the nuances and flavor notes of good coffee, and speaks about regions and climates with the passion and expertise of a good sommelier discussing great wine cellars. He talks about the type of place he wants to create, how it will be unpretentious and inviting. How it'll feel like it's always been part of the community. In short, he tells me his dream with the energy of a man who's pursuing it.

“You know what's crazy,” Matt says.

“What's that?”

“It was really Fakebook that got the ball rolling on all of this,” he says.

“
What!
” I cry. “But…you
knew
it was fake. With the flowers, and the copy of
Million
Little
Pieces
, the ironic mix tape…my god, even the anonymous text messages…you tortured me because you knew it was fake.”

“Yeah,” he says, “but the whole time I had to reflect on why watching you—or him—or whatever…watching you pretend to walk out on your career—I started thinking about why that meant so much to me. So yeah, Branch Street exists because of Fakebook.”

“Please don't put that on me…” I say. “I already have to live with Jamie quitting her job.”

“You quit your job, too,” he reminds me.

“Yeah,” I say. “A couple of them, ha. The best is still LiveWired.”

“What happened there?”

“I called them up and said, ‘Yesterday was my last day.'”

We both laugh.

“So you quit a job without notice,” Matt says. “Sounds familiar.”

“Yeah…Fake Dave rubbed off on me too, I guess,” I admit.

I smile a little and think of the journey I've been on since Fakebook ended. Of how I hustled to get out of the LiveWired mess—waking up early and staying up late, calling in every favor I had until I got a new job at another PR firm. It wasn't the move I'd originally envisioned, but it stopped the bleeding, and came with a computer and a desk.

From there, I kept pushing forward in perfect Fake Dave style—with unearned confidence and a complete lack of planning. I chased what was interesting and ultimately landed a really creative gig in a field I never knew existed. I'm a senior art director at an experiential design firm called Mirrorball. We create live experiences—sponsor concerts, throw big events, put on shows—all over the country. We're tasked with creating new and different things and sending them out into the world—all with that wonderful open-ended mission to “get people talking.” I'm done making up fake events. I now make up real ones.

But beyond my day job, I feel like my whole life has been reinfused with a proactive spirit—a “why not?” attitude. I spend my time working on personal art and projects with a newfound energy. When I began, I felt like the future was narrowing for me. Now it feels wide open, and my scope of what's possible is much broader than it ever was. I'm more willing than ever to walk forward without a plan and let life surprise me.

“It all worked out,” I say to Matt. It did for him too, actually.

“So I'm opening a coffee roaster, Jamie is living in Portland, and you've become an art director,” Matt says. “A lot happened, out of, you know, nothing happening.”

“That's the power of art,” I say.

“Oh jeez,” Matt snarks. “What do you say, arteest, care for another round?”

“Sure.” I laugh.

Over two years ago, when I sat on this patio that Labor Day weekend, Matt Campbell was a Facebook friend. That is to say, not really a friend at all. Almost three years later, I'm raising my glass in the town I was exiled from, with a friend I wouldn't have had, in the bar where it all started.

We've never been more connected, yet never more isolated, I think.

What a crock of shit. The truth is so much more complex and so much more compelling.

We've never been so connected.