Fakebook
Page 27
Aaron Summers The Bob Newhart ending. Classic. Thumbs way up.
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Kristin Boros Williamson Holy crap…
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George Gross I think I’m just sad that it had to end.
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Peter Glass well played sir, feeling very used here :)
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Michèle Malejki Awesome! Congrats on the creativity, sir.
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Ralph Cicirelli Happy birthday for real! Thanks for letting me be a part of the adventure.
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Jamie McAllister So were you in NYC the whole time? I admit I believed the whole thing and defended the truth of it to people who were dubious. Good job.
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Dave Cicirelli Jamie…your personal message to me gave me an anxiety attack, haha.
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Jamie McAllister haha—no worries. I was just in a bad place at the time and after I quit I started getting nervous that I’d done something stupid, and fake or not reading your story made me feel sane. It turned out it was 100% the right decision (whether it was a sane one or not).
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Matt Riggio You sack of shit!
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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?”
Dave Cicirelli
yep
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Amanda Brokaw Schweitzer For real?
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Daniel Timek wow, cool look alike.
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Stanley Shih Don’t you have a habit of photoshopping FB posts?
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Ted Kaiser is this real or more Fakebook?
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Erin Brennan Hanson It’s not so much that you’re standing next to the Boss, but that you’re in a Blockbuster that is blowing my mind.
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“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.
It’s hard to even know where to begin thanking people for all their efforts in this unplanned experiment in social media storytelling.
This book truly is a social story. In many ways, this is a story about my relationship with my community, and my community had a starring role. It wasn’t just the knowing collaborators who turned Fakebook from an idle thought into a strange adventure, but also everyone who didn’t know this was a hoax. Anyone who read the page, left a comment, or simply gossiped about “what’s going on with Dave” made Fakebook what it is.
Thank you, Ted Kaiser, Steve Cucinelli, Joe Moscone, Elizabeth Lee, Matt Campbell, Elliott Askew, Kate Moulton, Jeff Shaw, Matt Riggio, Rolando Alvarado, Suzanne Pagliorola, Alula Medhen, Christine Reardon, Chris Bailey, Joe Lennon, and everyone else whose contributions are visible both on my wall and in the pages of this book.
But where the fake story ended is where the real work began. There were countless people who made this book possible.
My father, Ralph, gets a lot of deserving attention in this book, but none of it would be possible without the enthusiasm and support of my entire family. So thank you, Ralph, Mark, Jeff, Lisa, Elisha, and especially my mother, Phyllis. She was an invaluable sounding board as I wrote and a patient set of ears when I was feeling overwhelmed.
I’d also like to thank the entire Sourcebooks team—in particular my two editors, Peter Lynch and Stephanie Bowen.
Peter, my original editor, first purchased Fakebook. His enthusiasm helped me believe in my own crazy idea.
I cannot thank my editor Stephanie Bowen enough for joining this project mid-stride and never skipping a beat. Upon meeting her, it was immediately clear that she understood what I hoped to accomplish, and together we worked toward it. This book is better because she became a part of it.
In addition: With a book requiring as many production logistics as this, pulling Fakebook off would have been almost impossible without the patient organizational efforts of Heather Hall, Chris Norton, Jenna Skwarek, and Abby Saul.
And of course there is my agent, Stephen Barr. He saw the potential in Fakebook as a story and me as an author. More than anyone else, this book exists because he believed I could write it. I truly cannot thank him enough.
None of this would have happened if not for Maya Rock, who thought enough of Fakebook to put me on Stephen’s radar. Or Mariko Nagataki, who was the “friend” when Maya and I were just friends of friends. Or Brian Morrison, who got me to join the coed hipster hockey league where Mariko and I met. And on and on backward through the many crazy interlocking and complicated webs of personal and professional connections that make up the social network of humanity—going all the way back to when Adam first met Eve.
Dave Cicirelli is a New York–based writer and art director with extensive experience serving iconic consumer and entertainment brands across all print, digital, and experiential media. His work has won a number of awards, including a Silver Anvil and honors from HOW magazine, GDUSA, and Creativity 38.
In the eight years he’s been in the marketing industry, he’s witnessed the impact social media has had on how brands talk to consumers. In the sixteen years since he got an AOL screen name, he’s witnessed the impact social media has had on how people talk to one another.
Fakebook is his first book, and that’s why there are so many pictures in it.
Photo Credit: Stephen Papageorge
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