The Facebook Phenom

I have not been a very good blogger as of late, because I have been so busy editing a manuscript.  Which just goes to show, if I had a "real" job, I would never have time to do nonsensical things like blog all day long.  How sad would that be?

Exactly.  But it is done -- or at least I'm not going to look at it anymore because you can ALWAYS find something else to change.  Which is why I have two of my own manuscripts rotting in a digital folder.  And to think I would never consider myself a perfectionist, but when it comes to letting go of a manuscript, I am crazy intent on making it perfect.  Which is subjective to begin with, so alas, it is a hopeless pursuit.

But blogging?  Hell no, I have no visions of grandeur here -- the above paragraph is all sorts of bad grammar and a mismatch of you and I -- but whatever.  Not going to fix it.  Nope.

I have been percolating on an entry about Facebook, which seems to be going nuts the past few months.  I've had an actual account for several years, but I never paid any attention to it.  I noticed that Maddie would spend hours on it, and I would go to mine and wonder, what the heck is she doing in here?  What is there to see?

I just didn't have enough active friends!  I get it now.  And while it is certainly another electronic time sucker upper, the concept fascinates me.  I am a very good friend to have if you will reciprocate email.  Even if you send me a quick note, chances are you will get back a slim novel in response.  The problem with that is that it makes some people feel inferior.  Obviously that isn't my intent, but I will say, hey, how come you didn't write me back.  And they will say, well, I don't know, your email was so long I could never come up with something like that.

And the thing is, you can't convince some people that you really, REALLY don't care what they write back, as long as they make contact at all.  And while my intent is never to out-write them, I do have a few friends who are super talented writers and when I receive their emails, I don't regard them as better than mine ... I look at them as challenges!  Oh!  Think they're funnier than me?  I don't think so! (Well maybe I DO intend to out-write them!)  But that is not something you dash off in a few minutes -- so those are few and far between, especially when we all get busy.

And I say all of this in a thousand words or less to arrive at my conclusion that I believe that one of the reasons Facebook is so popular is because all you have to do is say "I am doing laundry," and you have satisfied your daily writing requirements.  And because so many people do put up things as simple as "I am doing laundry," no matter what you put seems quite classy in comparison!  "I am going to yoga."  And you read that and think, I didn't know Polly went to yoga.  It's just little tidbits of information that come out on a daily basis that if you follow it closely enough (and I am known to get trapped into checking out everyone's comments) then eventually you know what type of activities make up your friend's lives.

Which brings me to another topic:  Who are your friends?  I get asked this by other friends (real friends I might add) who ask me how picky I am about who I confirm as a friend.  Well, it seems pretty simple to me.  If they are a FRIEND, then I confirm them!  If I have never heard of them before, or they found me via the friend finder and their name sounds vaguely familiar and maybe I went to high school with them but we hung out in different galaxies, then no.  Not going to confirm them.  I am not interested in the lives of perfect strangers (well, I am, but not just any perfect stranger!)

The way I look at it is, would you invite them to a big party at your house?  If not, then no, they don't get a glimpse into my life.  And remember, it can be a whole lot more than a glimpse.  I sometimes wonder if people realize how much information just kind of scoots around cyberspace via one contact to another.  I will look through entire photo albums of people I know, but am not friends with, because they are friends with someone I am friends with.  Does that make sense?  If you send a picture to Jane Doe and I am friends with her, I will probably see that picture, even if you have always hated my guts and would NEVER send me a picture.

Facebook also enables you to stay in contact with a wide range of people with little effort.  Instead of writing long, newsy emails to a friend, all you have to do is click on a photo they just sent out and say "OMG, I remember this," or some such comment, and you're good.  You don't have to go into a long and lengthy discourse on absolutely anything.  You could never get away with sending an email that contained four words strung together that don't really even form a true sentence.

It is the lazy man's approach to staying in touch.  It's like the fast food of human contact.  Drive through and move on.  

I had a friend join Facebook on Friday.  I was her first friend.  I went to her page and saw that she had one picture and I made a comment of "You need more friends."

Yesterday when I logged on, I noticed that she had been quite the active one, there were entries on her actions peppered throughout my page.  I went to her page and realized that in the course of ONE day she had gathered over 100 friends.  Because I am competitive, I went to my page to figure out how many friends **I** had! LOL  Seriously.  Like who cares?  I have accumulated my friends over a period of time, but she did it in hours!!!  Here's a situation of showing up late at the party means far less work!  Someone else has already accumulated all the friends you need, just push the button.

I still have some questions as to how smart all of this is -- this plastering of our lives on cyberspace for really anyone to see.  I have drilled it to my kids that whatever is on Facebook STAYS on Facebook and is available to any school, employer or potential spouse the future holds.  So unless you want to be 30-years-old and have your new boss say "Wow, that was some picture of you in college hanging upside down with that beer bong," you probably want to really be careful what you do when there are cameras around.

Which is another thing.  There are now ALWAYS cameras around.  Always.  So in truth, anything you do can show up on the internet within minutes of you committing a stupid pose or act.   And there is no question, if someone wants to use your words or pictures against you, they will.

Like anything, it can be used for evil, so it's always wise to keep that in mind.  But it's an amazing application and I love how many people I am now in semi-contact (I guess you could call it contact-lite) with on a daily basis.  

Now I am off to do laundry.  (Yeah, right!)