The World of Facebook

I have a profile on Facebook.

That’s really not surprising, because as best I can tell, most people with some type of computer access have filled out the papers and become assimilated into the Facebook congregation.

At first, it was kind of fun. You learn that your old high school crush is now a grandmother in Amarillo. Your 8th grade band teacher, now well into his 70’s, is still kicking around and, amazingly enough, has a Facebook profile as well. You can finally answer the question, “Whatever happened to __________” sometimes, although information overload can be problematic even if you’re looking for a relatively uncommon name.

After you’ve spent a month looking up all of the people from your past, you start to realize that there’s a downside to this.

Some of these people were edited out of your Rolodex for a reason. You’ve forgotten that the good-by hug and backslap at graduation was in many respects a celebration of relief that you could have some distance away from that person. No longer would you have to put up with the fact that they drink milk straight from the carton or hog all the Cheetos after they’ve been out partying.

When you renew the contact, you find that despite the fact that 30+ years have gone by, your old college roommate still expects you to be the designated driver AND buy the beer.

Or that the girl who all but stalked you now lives with 17 cats – and has the time to write you 4 times a day as well as forward many of the approximately 3,000 humorous emails she gets each week AND share current photos of all the kitties.

The obnoxious jerk that had the cubicle next to you at your first job after college still engages in the ritual of topping whatever achievement you’ve made because he's a legend in his own mind, but hey, that's his reality.

There’s a reason that we didn’t keep in contact with these people, but unfortunately some of them are now searching you out as well. After all, it’s really not that hard if you’ve filled in much of the demographic information at all.

Because most everyone has a profile on Facebook.

I tend to accept the “friend” invitation from just about anyone and then simply hide those I really don’t want to follow so I don’t see them every day. This usually includes those people who post their every move and thought for their friends to follow.

I’m sorry, but I don’t need to know what you had for lunch most of the time.

If they get too obnoxious – usually those who spout hate speech from one end of the spectrum or the other – I quietly delete them. I find that a lot of those people have hundreds of friends, if not thousands, so they seldom realize that one has dropped off the list. Rather than building relationships electronically, they seem to be looking for followers of their particular ideology.

Which leads us to another query – as I approach my 5th decade of life, I have fewer than a dozen people with whom I want to maintain that close of contact and it’s taken several months to acquire those. How is it that our 14 year old son has 387 “friends” within 48 hours of opening a profile? Friends who, if his page is to be believed, communicate on a fairly regular basis and recognize him in the real world when they come into contact with each other.

There is a dark side to Facebook, too.

Sometimes you find things out about people that you really are happier not knowing. I’m not talking about the end of relationships or illness or things like that. Those events may be unfortunate, but it usually is good to know it about people with whom you are in contact.

After all, asking a casual acquaintance how his wife Cindy is doing when, had you checked out his Facebook page you’d know that he’s now with his life partner Javier, can occasionally lead to awkward lulls in the conversation.

Sometimes though, like people-watching in a mall, you can learn about the true character of a person by what they post on their profile.

It’s somewhat irksome, for example, when the client who won’t pay his bill claiming that the poor economy has wrecked his business and he has no money posts photos of his trip to the beach along with comments about the boat chartered to take the group deep sea fishing.

Or the one who skips an appointment claiming illness and then posts pics of the concert she attended that same evening.

Some of the most curious ones are the elected officials who list other places as their home towns. I can understand if you left it blank, because there is an element of risk associated with putting your location out there – after all, your college buddies might show up on your front steps unexpectedly – but if you’re asking voters to pick you to run their City, shouldn’t you have at least enough pride in the location to list it as your home?

When computers were first introduced into the workplace, employers were worried that too much time was wasted playing solitaire. That’s got nothing on all the little games on Facebook that suck you in by requiring that you feed your fish, milk your cows, or wack someone who’s trying to move in on your turf.

Sorry, but I just ignore all those invitations. I have a hard enough time watering the three houseplants and feeding the fish that actually exist in my universe much less creating imaginary ones that need constant daily attention.

It’s hard enough to maintain relationships with all of my imaginary friends on Facebook.