Speaking of Facebook, I've got two friend suggestions. One is a former member of my band, who actually lives in my neighborhood and I see around town. We have lots of the same friends and we're on totally friendly terms but have a wierd and awkward history that involves a drunken assault, passive aggressiveness, artistic differences and myriad other vagaries. I'm sure we've disappointed each other on many levels, despite the fact we both have mellowed since those days. There are also a lot of good and fun memories there, let it be said. I'd be totally fine inviting him and his family over for a neighborhood Sunday BBQ but I'm not sure we want to know every detail of our current lives in real-time. I wonder if my name is sitting there, unclicked on, in his friend suggestion box too.
The other is a friend from college during which I had a huge flirtation that never went anywhere due to the fact that I had a boyfriend at home. His personality at the time: wild, witty, smart as hell, piss-the-bed drunkenness, midnight motorcycle wheelies and a penchant for eccentric nonconformism for its own sake (a preacher's kid, need I say more?). I have no idea what he's doing now, and although I could find out with the click of a button, I kind of almost don't want to know. It's one glorious memory that should stay the way it is.
I also have a friend request from someone from my high school whose name sounds familiar but I can't recall a single conversation we might have had. She has something like three million friends and could be someone who collects 'friends' like serial killers collect souvenirs of their victims. Every once in a while I get a similar urge, just to see how many people I could accumulate. But what's the point of that? Will it make up for being an unpopular freak in high school? Not that I actually mind being that freak, I'm pretty happy to let that flag fly, actually. Maybe I am not cut out for the social applications of the oughts, just like I wasn't for the actual social interaction of the 80s and 90s.
I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook, vacillating wildly and frequently on its usefulness, but there is one thing I'm sure of: some memories of people should stay they way they were made, dying young and making a good-looking corpse. The alternate is a Zombie Friend, it looks and walks and talks like a friend but is actually an empty hull that wants to eat your brains.
2 comments:
Leave college crush alone, but forward the friend suggestion to me, I'll see if he's worth cyber stalking cause he sounds hot. At least you know he's alive.
I have loved all aspects of FB except the uncomfortable wanting to get rid of a few and having to defriend conservative blabbermouths. I think the most difficult are the semi-professional relationship people that friend me. I am on boards with them or they are affiliated with my job. Do I really want them to see me in a short skirt and see my comments that have such intellectually stimulating phrases including "dumb ass", "frigging", and obsessive ovulating status reports about famous actors. FB certainly doesn't represent the best of me, but it does give a platform for my sarcastic, shallow, and thinking I'm funny self at times.
To friend or not to friend, that is the question. I avoid collectors. Or accept them, check them out and then 2 weeks later discreetly defriend them. I have a post in my head about what I like about FB.
Remind me to defriend you Al when we're 50 and I become unbearably boring, at risk of being one of your living dead.
When we're 50 it'll be virtual Facebook in 3D and we'll like it because during the 2d Great Depression we won't be able to afford travel.
How do you discreetly defriend? Doesn't a post pop up on their home page or something?
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