The local paper has now published two articles about Facebook, which is completely stupid. Granted, these were in the Features section, not front-page news, but still. It seems some people, namely the people who write these particular articles, take FB a little too seriously. (I guess some would say I do too since I am blogging about the FB articles. Touche.)
The first article was about how some people ask other people to be their "friends" even though they were actually mean to these people when they were in grade school or high school. Like the popular, cliquish kids being FB friends with the dorks, dweebs and nerds who they ignored or insulted for years on end. The second article was about de-friending someone on FB because they are annoying, insulting, or a stalker.
When I read the first article a few weeks back, I couple of thoughts went through my head. First, if you really don't like someone and never have, then don't ask them to be a friend or confirm them as a friend or de-friend them as quickly as possible if you've made either of the aforementioned mistakes. Life is too short to be annoyed with some person you hardly know whenever you want to just fool around on the computer.
When I was in grade school, there were a number of kids I hated because I thought they were stuck up assholes. True, they were kids, and we all know kids can be horribly mean, and I was an overly sensitive kid, therefore ripe for abuse. Chances are pretty good that they've changed over the last 20-odd years, as I have, and aren't stuck up assholes. But I sure as fuck ain't going to search them out or ask them to be my friend. I might look them up to see how they look or how many kids they have, but I have no interest in anything more substantial. Now if they asked me to be their friend, I would have give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they have matured enough to see what a stellar fucking person I am!
And then there are other people that I liked but lost touch with over time, and so it is nice to catch up and be able to keep better "tabs" on them.
FB is a fun, keep in touch kind of thing, a way to find humor, camaraderie, support. But it is not really a friendship tool because the truth, at least for me, is that my family sucks so much of my time and energy, it is virtually impossible for me to have friendships with 104 people. See what I take overly-seriously is not FB, but the word friend. I always have.
It's like the word girlfriend or boyfriend. You get to be a certain age, and the terms just sound stupid and don't convey what you want and need for them to convey. Same with friend. My daughter has "friends" that she meets and plays with at the park for 20 minutes, and by this I mean, she didn't know them at all 20 minutes ago. But they are now friends.
The word friend seems too special or treasured to use for a lot of people I know, but acquaintance sounds too unfamiliar and distant. There just isn't a happy middle for me, and I guess that is the crux of my issue with these FB articles. They just keep bringing into focus my latent issues with the whole social networking thang.
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