Facebook

So, the other day Julia asked me why Scott joined Facebook. As usual, his response was just to piss Heather off.

Here's the thing that bothered me though about the mini-conversation that evolved from this. He says that it's about people who haven't seen or talked to or cared about one another in however many years and yet now we're suddenly interested in each other's lives.

Well, I think that's just mean-spirited but also incorrect. I think that for people who are a little older, Facebook is the opportunity to re-connect with people that you lost contact with. Not because you stopped caring about the person all together, but your life and their life went on different paths.

They went to college and I threw my life down the toilet by tying myself to ding dong. It was what it was. Maybe if I had gone to college, I would have stayed in touch and had a grown-up job like they do and we would have had things in common. But, now we don't have things in common but yet...

I don't know. I get excited when I hear from people from back in the day. No, they haven't been burning through their black books trying to find me either, but neither have I. I still want to know what happened to them and how they are doing and what their lives are like now. It's cool. Are we going to become friends again? Probably not, but more than we were before we had Facebook. Is FB a silly, glittery thing with flair and electronic drinks and stalking techniques -- heck yeah. But let's not undermine the reconnections by saying that it's about people previously not caring and now suddenly they do. That's just not right.

So I have thought about what you have said and they conclusions I have come to are these:

People on facebook for me atleast fall into one of the following categories:

Friends or people I still talk to

People who I used to hang out with and because of this past connection we have agreed to be
mutual current voyeurs. These are people whom if I ran into them at Target I might stop and talk to for 10 minutes or so... perhaps even go get coffee. If they wanted to be more than friends, I might try to get more involved.

People who I wish I had been closer with. Its a way of not letting go.

People who I dont really like or have any vested interest in, but seeing things going on in their lives and occasionally commenting or having sparring conversations keeps you connected. The world is small. If you ever, move to where they are, need a new job, you might need to know someone... This is generally termed networking. Laura never loses touch of anyone. I admire that about her. She has this vast network of "friends" who actually know very little about her but because she keeps in touch and lets them tell her about themselves she is well connected. Its very smart. Its self serving perhaps, but smart none the less.