Social Notworking (or, Get Out of My Face-book)

No, I don't want to be your Facebook friend.


It's not you, it's me. Actually, that's not entirely true. It probably is you. I just don't know what, specifically, it is about you that makes me not want to be your friend, but if I were to become your friend, I would likely find out in short order, and then I wouldn't want to be your friend anymore. So it's best we just nip this shit in the bud right now before I have to un-friend you and things take a turn for the ugly.


Let me explain.


I've never really been a gadget person. I'm the first to admit my technological retardation. I was still putting half-eaten cassette tapes back together and playing them in my boom box (the one Marc left in the trunk of my car on our last day of high school) until my parents took pity on me and bought me a CD player in 1993. (I think this had less to do with it being my birthday and more to do with their embarrassment over my lack of a respectable stereo.)


That said, I've been slow to warm to the whole "social networking" Internet shtick. I've been blogging in one format or another since blogs were called "web diaries," but always anonymously. I shunned Myspace entirely because, well, I'm not a 19-year-old sorostitute* looking for a forum for all those pictures of me on the receiving end of a beer bong and making out with my bestest friend FOREVER.


I don't know how I came to be on Facebook. I think my brother (ten years my junior) must have goaded me into it so our sibling group wouldn't have to actually phone each other anymore. At any rate, once I started acquiring friends, I was hooked. I even went so far as to join the Lafayette High School Class of 1990 Reunion Planning Committee in a fit of foolish (and likely intoxicated) nostalgia. I poked a few people, threw a couple of snowballs, and sent Kevin Jonas to more than a few unsuspecting chums. I threw myself into Facebook the way some people throw themselves into their jobs.

Then came the big layout change, and everyone got their collective panties in a twist over it. I didn't think it was any big deal. If anything, I preferred this new layout, because it allowed me to get the skinny on EVERYONE I KNEW in one fell swoop. Oh, look--Mandy is not ready for Monday. Kelly is getting ready to do some scrapbooking. Rob is working the 3-11 shift at the Leavenworth Bar tonight, and 6 people like this!

Gradually, though, I've come to notice a change in my general demeanor. I'm cranky and my tolerance for people and their bullshit has reached a serious low. This shift has concerned me, because I wasn't really sure where it was coming from. And then it dawned on me one day, as I was perusing the Home page and everyone's status updates and found myself angrily declaring in my head that I couldn't give a flying fuck less whether or not Mindy could find 1,000,000 people who hate cancer!, and thinking her wager was really fucking stupid because seriously, who is going to be that one person who says "not me, I fucking LOVE cancer, count me out!"?

I know too much. And it's pissing me off.

Because of Facebook, I now know the innermost thoughts of people whose innermost thoughts I really don't need or want to know. I don't care if the girl who sat behind me in 10th grade biology is eating a candy bar. I don't want to know what my sister-in-law's views on religion or the American troops in Afghanistan are. If anything, we're all better off not knowing this kind of stuff about each other. That's what keeps us able to smile at each other and make idle chitchat during family gatherings, and prevents us from going to blows over platters of turkey and stuffing. I don't want to know intimate details about my co-workers' lives, because to know they exist outside the office means I have to admit to myself my office and job are real and not just some horrible dream I have every night.

Once I made this realization, I started hiding people. And when that wasn't enough, I started avoiding Facebook, save a brief once-a-day glance at the people who don't make me want to put my fist through my monitor. I imagine eventually that, too, will fade out, and I will actually look forward to good old fashioned emails from people beseeching me to "forward this to 15 people or your cat will die!"



*sorostitute : noun. A female of college age who participates in sorority activities and, therefore, subtle acts of prostitution. As much as I'd like to take credit for this term, I actually stole it from my husband. Mad props to you, darling. Mad, mad props.