Tuesday, April 24, 2012

A Survivors Guide To Facebook

By Allen Bacon, The Daily Bosco

I imagine in the earliest incarnation of Facebook, Caveman Og didn’t like what Caveman Zog wrote on the wall. Something about him dragging his woman around by the hair and failing to get a fire started. Then Caveman Og clubbed Caveman Zog.

Not too long ago, I came into the 21st Century and joined Facebook. Millions of people can’t be wrong, can they?

For the most part, it’s been pretty cool. Like my cousin Erik posted an interesting and informative video on credit. My cousin Erin finished an 8k run over the weekend. Good stuff.

But then it got ugly…My daughter tagged me with the most unflattering photo ever taken of me…and oh my God..my son is reading Chekov and listening to NPR. I don’t need to know that.

Then there’s this ever consuming fear about allowing the wrong people to be my friends. I am afraid one of my friends is going to write something personal on my wall that I don’t want other people to know…like Remember the time when we went to (fill in the blank) and you got so (fill in the blank)ed that you (fill in the blank) ed all over the (fill in the blank). And that other time when (fill in the blank) filed a (fill in the blank) against you.

And there’s this whole empty feeling when you ask somebody to be your friend and they don’t respond. Or somebody asks to be your friend and you know that’s not a good idea. The pressure is intense.

I’m not sure what the purpose of Facebook is anyway. At this point I’ve pretty much gotten a hold of everybody I want to get a hold of and there was a reason why I didn’t contact some of them in the first place. And I really don’t need to know a running commentary on what everybody is doing at any particular moment. (It’s more fun to make up stuff).

And I have Friends Envy. I only have a few friends and most of them are relatives. My daughter has 1000 friends. My son has 900 friends. One of my best friends was on for one day and they got 30 friends immediately. I feel so inadequate. I look so...so anti-social.

I have a friend whose Blackberry died after being on Facebook for two days. They were getting so many Facebook emails and it was going off every half minute…the Blackberry couldn’t handle it. Or they ended up throwing the Blackberry against the wall…not sure which….I was going to go on their Facebook page to find out what really happened but they are not on it anymore. Plus they wouldn’t let me be on their Facebook anyway.

I miss the good old days when I was trying to find somebody and you would just hire a private investigator to hunt them down. Or googled them..

Or if I wanted to talk to a friend or relative I would just pick up the phone and call them or go over to their house or go out to lunch…without everybody else knowing about it.

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