Vampires of Facebook | Mark Morford | SF Gate

[Joolz]

Interesting to find this at SF Gate. I've long felt that what he speaks of is very real, and I believe, it's a good idea to ponder upon what he's saying here...

The vampires of Facebook
Could it actually be dangerous to connect with everyone you ever knew?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, April 29, 2009

In psychic workshops, they teach you all about cords.

Cords that bind. Cords that connect. Cords that can invigorate as well as consume, excite your spirit and yet also leech life from your very soul, cords made of simple psychic energy that run like invisible cables straight from your heart and your mind and your various energetic G-spots straight out to the world, and back again.

But most of all, they run straight into other people. Or from them, straight into you. It happens all the time, every day, in every interaction you have, psychic energy instantly passing between individuals as you move through the world and through your thoughts and memories and dreams, energy cords established even over long distances, phone calls, handshakes, gropings, co-ed showers, not to mention fantasies, hatreds, unwanted desires and just about everything in between. It's just what we do.

Usually the cords last only a short time before fading away, a constant swarm of insta-circuits made and broken, effortless and normal -- just the everyday thrum of life.

But not always. Energy cords are also potent, dangerous motherfrickers. They can last years, lifetimes, reappear like a virus, inflict nefarious harm and cause all sorts of unpleasant melodrama, illness and upheaval in your equilibrium. Obsessions, intense loves, heartbreaks, resentments, someone's awful day or their own needy, I'm-a-victim energy can attach itself like a vampire onto the neck of your good mood and suddenly you'll feel like you just got run over by a bus made of thumbtacks and snail spit, and you have no idea why. You know that feeling? Of course you do.

Let us not go too far. I am not here to convince you such cords exist. I am not quite drunk enough for that. Really, it doesn't matter if you believe in them or not because, like air, like black socks with sandals, like the proper deification of Obama, it just is. They just are. Let's just go with it.

But it does lead, quite naturally, to that most wonderful and disturbing of cord-slinging, energy-wringing e-creations, known as Facebook.

From an energy perspective, Facebook is a goddamn cord-makin' wonderland, a sort of psychic Grand Central, the place where psychic energy goes to jack itself back into the mainframe. It's tens of millions of people peeking and poking and peering into the lives of those they know, those they want to know, those they like or love or hate or begrudge or secretly want to peel the pants from and lick like a popsicle in summer.

It's a notion that struck me as I realized that nearly everyone who's ever played a reasonably significant role in my life, both past and present, has since found and reconnected with me, initially via email through the digital reach of this very column over the years, but now far more actively and vividly through my Facebook profile (or, to a lesser extent, my Twitter feed). It's sort of stunning, really.

Old girlfriends, lost loves, long-forgotten friends, high school sweethearts, band mates, roommates, old nemeses, lots of former cheerleaders turned born-again Christian megamoms, and everything in between. All those old connections, those lives and chapters and periods of my life I thought I'd left behind so cleanly, so decisively, way back when? Here they all are again, like a living scrapbook, constantly renewing and updating itself. What a thing.

It is, on one hand, a marvelous and magical invention. It is often fascinating and deeply touching to dip into those worlds, those lives again, a true gift to see what became of all those people, their joys and paths and prison sentences and odd tastes in haircuts and copious offspring (note to self: if I ever have children, do not use my child's photo as my own personal profile pic. It's just creepy).

But I also wonder: Do we fully understand just how powerful this tool is, and how strange? Do we know what we're doing on a basic energetic level, with all this connecting and reconnecting, what sort of cords and swords and potential vampiric firestorms of energy we invite in when we invite in all those old (and new) faces and beings and memories? I do not think we do. I do not think we are all that prepared.

Of course, if you care in the slightest about any of this -- or even if you don't -- there's still a very obvious solution. You simply opt out, turn it all off, ignore Facebook and its ilk entirely and refuse to create an e-profile or list your email address anywhere and just close your eyes tight and pretend it's not happening as the modern culture moves on without you. Easy enough.

But not for long. Generation Tweet will comprehend no such option. For them, social networking is already automatic and inborn and expected in every facet of modern life. To be under 30 right now and not to have multiple social accounts and active e-profiles is to be weird and outcast and isolated. It's as foreign an idea for Generation Tweet as it would be for those of us hovering around Gen X to be without, say, Costco and Pearl Jam and $5 coffee drinks. It's just who they are.

There is another vital tool they teach in energy workshops: protection. Grounding. How to hold your own space, how to clean yourself out, flush negative energy, make sure you're aware of the swarms of dark and parasitic crap floating about your everyday world.

They teach you not only about the existence of cords and how recognize them when they latch onto you or when someone's trying to stab into your space and drag you down, but even more importantly, how to sever, how to cut the cords you no longer need and that no longer serve -- which, as it turns out, is often pretty much all of them.

Is there a Facebook tool for that yet, some sort of nifty, portable vampire alert/psychic cord-cutting device to keep yourself clear and open and cord-free, well-protected amid the wonderful/insane swarm of pokes and chats and friend feeds? I do not believe there is. Maybe I'll write an iPhone app.

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Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SFGate.com. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. To get on Mark's personal (i.e.; non-Chronicle) mailing list (appearances, books, readings, blogs, yoga and more), please click here and remove two more.

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Mods: I wasn't sure where to put this post. It seemed to me to fit best here, but if you see a better fit for it elsewhere, please feel free to move it, with my blessings.

[Shirleypal]

Interesting Joolz, I have taken a number of psychic workshops when I lived in Berkeley and have read so many books on the subject I have lost count and have never once heard of 'Cords', go figure.......

[Psychicwolf]

Good information to have, especially if you do participate in those social forums. They kind of give me the creeps. I don't have a MySpace or Facebook account nor do I Twitter. The only Twitter I follow (I just read it from her blog) is a friend's cat. Life from the cat perspective.

This is the only forum I am registered on, except for the occasional posting (sharing help mainly) on a costumer's board. I also read and comment on a few econ blogs but those are either anecdotal econ experiences, comments on econ news or mocking of Heli Ben and Turbo Timmay.:p

I think you have to be very selective online who you let "into" your life. I lurked here for almost a year before I joined. Just to make sure that it was okay and there was nothing that I would describe as "sinister" in a spiritual/energy type thing.

Mark Morford of SF Gate posts all sorts of interesting pieces. I like reading him.

[Joolz]

I'd heard of 'cords,' Shirley. I think of it more in terms of the web that connects us all, though. Strands of connectedness.

And yes, PW, I am also cautious about what information I share on the internet, and am selective about where and what I post. Always have been.

[Linnea]

Interesting article, Joolz. Psychic protection is always prudent. Never considered the darker side in the struggle for the birth of a new consciousness. What will prevail is the Light, but there may well be obstruction along the way.