It’s 10/11/12! So exciting!
Here’s what drives me crazy about Facebook. For a site that is supposed to keep you closer to your friends, it fails. I have never, ever logged off Facebook without feeling lonelier than when I logged on.
What Facebook is quite good at is keeping me in touch with my friends who are on the periphery of my life. I have a friend from elementary school and we are friends on Facebook. I know more about her life now than I have since we parted in high school and I’m quite happy about that.
But here’s the deal. Aside from my other friend who is a prolific poster, quite funny and delightful, I don’t get enough about anyone from Facebook. My friends who are my real face-to-face (or email-to-email if they are far away) can’t possibly post enough on Facebook to replicate what one get-together will do.
When I read their posts between seeing them, I end up just feeling more
separated from them.
And while Facebook is handy for the “I wonder what’s going on with [insert anyone from my past]” type questions, the result is ultimately unsatisfying. For instance: last week I wondered what had become of a friend from high school with a unique enough name that it was easy to search for him. There he was, with a page and everything. I investigated his page and I can tell you that I know pretty much nothing about him except the city he lives in, the fact that he apparently plays the banjo (or at least holds one for the camera as if he plays it) and he may have a dog and a cat. So what’s the point? I don’t really want to contact him and become “friends” on Facebook, I just want three paragraphs about how his life is. If he had more posts, I could pull together a summary, but it’s not like the rank-and-file have publicists. In fact, right now I know more about Channing Tatum than all of my ex-boyfriends and that just seems wrong.
So I go on random “wonder what” hunts and come up with fragments of lives, thanks to Facebook. The site is all about the lure of the connection with little actual connection.
