Oh, Facebook. I hardly know what to do with it anymore. Sometimes I want to quit it Rhett Butler style because it's hard to give a damn about hundreds of people merely going about their days. Other times flipping through dozens of photo albums, quizzes and random status updates carries me through a terribly static Tuesday afternoon. I waver between the feelings of inadequacy that come from it being the fourth thing I log into in the mornings and the unabashed glee of discovering a long-lost friend or a window into the life of some person I always wanted to know. However, more often than not, juicy sleuth-style discoveries quickly fade into me being so sick of your baby's 19th _____ infection or your WTF-is-Whoville-Whatever-Cafe-I-Need-Corn-RIGHT-NOW-Farm situation. I hate that it's nearly impossible for me, the pot, to honestly be calling any of these kettles black when I'm just as good for a one-off rant about this job that virtually everyone in the world knows I hate. Enough already.
But what I'm really talking about is this list of friends o' mine. Earlier today a friend asked me whether I knew this person who had friended me and it embarrassed me to some degree to have to respond with what was essentially a "Hell naw!"
This got me to thinking about how I've acquired this list. It seems to operate a lot like a velvet rope theory of sorts. You're either on the list or you're not, but I'll be dern if you could ever know what gets you on the list, just as I'm not entirely certain what makes me leave anyone off of it. The composition of the friends list is inextricably tied to the reason I have a Facebook page at all - I want to be in. Included. In sync. Informed. Invited. In ya bidness. I find that all of these desires occur in spite of myself most of the time and more often as of late.
In large part, though, the list is comprised of the following sets of longing:
- Longing for Glory Days: Remembering how I used to weave through the hallways during class changes it seems plausible that I totally knew hundreds of people, and these people have found me again. I am popular; my total number of friends tells me so ... until I look at someone else's total and then I feel like I'm eating lunch in the corner alone and wearing totally outdated shoes with absolutely horrendous hair. Sigh.
- Longing for Connection to People You Really, Genuinely, Absolutely Adore: These are the people I can't see as much as I want to because we live in different places, but any one of them at any given moment has the power to make my day and I covet that. They consistently exceed my definition of cool, neato people and make me go all Melvin Udall wanting to become a better woman.
- Longing to Deflect E-hateration: These are like those outliers of co-workers. There are your day-to-day co-workers you speak to and work with on the regular and then there are these other people who do ... whatever. You know of them because you refill your coffee mugs at around the same time or they are really cool with someone you do genuinely like and, ultimately, you don't want to be rude. They're the people that find you, the ones that make you giddy when you log in and see "Friend Request" and then click on it and go, "Aw, umph. Who dat?" Subsequently you click around on their profile refreshing your memory until you realize you've clicked so thoroughly that you may as well accept the request because now you all up in they bidness anyhow. You probably went to elementary, middle and high school with these people and there's a not-so-slight chance that at some point you got all-cooler-than-thou on them and this is your way of amending that.
- Longing to Keep Tabs: I'm not going to say we all do it, but if you're honest, you know you're keeping tabs on someone for whatever reason. Negative or positive, inquiring minds have got to know.
- Longing to Open Oneself to Possibilities: Three options here.
- This is where people from foreign countries you've never been to fall. You always did want a real penpal you know.
- It's also where the person inspiring the "Hell naw!" falls. Maybe you do know this person, you kid yourself pseudo-seriously (but only in the attempt to wave off the sensation that you're developing Alzheimer's at 30). Look at her face, you say. She does seem awfully familiar with that blonde hair, and you have a shared network having gone to school with 30,000-plus other people. So you think that you should, and once you've friended them (and gained complete access to their profile), you can figure this out; you can chat them up; all will be revealed and your mama will be as proud of you as she was when you came home from kindergarten exclaiming, "Guess what? I made a friend today!"
- Or this could be where you accept the request and discover that you are just one of a surprisingly long list of people with the name Danita.
My intentions are good for the most part. The introvert in me thinks that Facebook's easy way of befriending people is the greatest thing ever. Yet we all know the reality of acquiring most of these so-called friends. You peek into their lives one click at a time. You congratulate (or bemoan) their relationship status updates, coo at their babies (until the notice of the 27th ____ infection surfaces), gush over their vacation snapshots, but if they messaged their phone number to you with an invitation to call and chat or hang out, you'd "x" out of their profile like you never really knew them at all. You'd just as soon join the 408,398th group to petition the makers of Facebook to change the "Friend Request" title to "Acquaintance Inquiry Only."
Newsflash - I have spent more time writing this post than I've spent perusing profile pages today, and feel better having done so. Writing this reminds me that while there's the tangible Spring cleaning to do (pollen-coated dashboards and bookshelves, anyone?), of course, now there's the intangible Spring cleaning I'm suddenly aware my friends list so thoroughly needs. Don't worry, gracious readers, you're all safe and adored :)