Death to Facebook.
A couple of months ago I started to receive invites to Facebook.
After two or three more, I caved and decided to get an account. Although I was reluctant to jump onto something so obviously trendy, it seemed like an effective method for keeping in touch with people in a more-immediate and less-involved way than livejournal.
Before I knew it, I had a pretty extensive list of old high school buddies, university friends, and cousins. I never actually got around to doing any "Facebook stalking" but I was flattered by the number of people who obviously went out looking for me and added me to their friends list.
Feelings of reservation, however, never quite went away. I was reluctant to post things like "political affiliation" or "relationship status" in case people from high school who knew me as a chronically single atheist found me and started asking questions. Plus, I found I was slow in the uptake in responding to wall-to-wall posts since I don't spend nearly as much time on the internet as I used to. I started feeling a little guilty for not being as enthusiastic about Facebook as other people clearly were. I had acknowledged that I was experiencing chronic Facebook-guilt.
Then a girl I used to hang around with in early high school suddenly popped up and asked me to friend her. I have nothing against her personally, but she was from a time in my life when I was pretty miserable and confused, and I only hung out with her because I didn't have a fucking clue. We never had much in common, and I ended up basically dumping her and her group for people I had more of a connection with. The idea of getting back into contact with her just made my skin crawl--I'm sure she's a lovely person but I would also like her to stay firmly entrenched in my past save for maybe a high school reunion or some other one-off event.
Even weirder was when another girl asked me to friend her--the only connection I have to her is that she's the daughter of a friend of my parents' (a friend they don't even like that much). I've only met her maybe six times in my whole life, and I only remember has as morphing from brat to white trash in a surprisingly smooth progression. The last time we spoke we talked about th different drugs we'd tried (I was plainly out-drugged). I'm not trying to imply that I think I'm better than her, I'm just saying, what would we talk about that wouldn't result in feelings of awkwardness?! Why in the world would she track me down?! Facebook was creating far more "ew, ick" feelings than I generally like to experience in a day.
The killing stroke was when I saw Meredith last weekend and she mentioned that my ex has a Facebook account. I had been so focused on old schoolmates tracking me down I never even considered that a self-professed Luddite like my ex would actually join Facebook and therefore have unfettered access to my bio (because of the casual, half-hearted way I registered, I never bothered making my account private). The concept that he would be able to surreptitiously keep tabs when I had gone to such lengths to cut him off from every part of my life nearly made me sick. I also hated the immediate impulse I had to check his own account to see if he was still going out with the girl he'd left me for (luckily, Meredith told me he had made his account private, which prevented me from actually carrying through with that self-destructive little urge).
As soon as I cancelled my account, I went back to check to ensure that it was gone. When I put in my email, Facebook scanned my email's address book to see who also had an account. My old roommates, Aaron and Michelle, popped up as having Facebooks. I suspected that they had decided they didn't like me anymore after I moved out (for reasons I don't fully understand), but seeing them with Facebooks that they never invited me really, really hurt. I had tried so hard to be good friends to the both of them, and though there was some friction surrounding my move, I expected us to stay that way. Apparently not.
So goodbye, Facebook. You were clearly created only to inspire drama, and I will have none of it.
After two or three more, I caved and decided to get an account. Although I was reluctant to jump onto something so obviously trendy, it seemed like an effective method for keeping in touch with people in a more-immediate and less-involved way than livejournal.
Before I knew it, I had a pretty extensive list of old high school buddies, university friends, and cousins. I never actually got around to doing any "Facebook stalking" but I was flattered by the number of people who obviously went out looking for me and added me to their friends list.
Feelings of reservation, however, never quite went away. I was reluctant to post things like "political affiliation" or "relationship status" in case people from high school who knew me as a chronically single atheist found me and started asking questions. Plus, I found I was slow in the uptake in responding to wall-to-wall posts since I don't spend nearly as much time on the internet as I used to. I started feeling a little guilty for not being as enthusiastic about Facebook as other people clearly were. I had acknowledged that I was experiencing chronic Facebook-guilt.
Then a girl I used to hang around with in early high school suddenly popped up and asked me to friend her. I have nothing against her personally, but she was from a time in my life when I was pretty miserable and confused, and I only hung out with her because I didn't have a fucking clue. We never had much in common, and I ended up basically dumping her and her group for people I had more of a connection with. The idea of getting back into contact with her just made my skin crawl--I'm sure she's a lovely person but I would also like her to stay firmly entrenched in my past save for maybe a high school reunion or some other one-off event.
Even weirder was when another girl asked me to friend her--the only connection I have to her is that she's the daughter of a friend of my parents' (a friend they don't even like that much). I've only met her maybe six times in my whole life, and I only remember has as morphing from brat to white trash in a surprisingly smooth progression. The last time we spoke we talked about th different drugs we'd tried (I was plainly out-drugged). I'm not trying to imply that I think I'm better than her, I'm just saying, what would we talk about that wouldn't result in feelings of awkwardness?! Why in the world would she track me down?! Facebook was creating far more "ew, ick" feelings than I generally like to experience in a day.
The killing stroke was when I saw Meredith last weekend and she mentioned that my ex has a Facebook account. I had been so focused on old schoolmates tracking me down I never even considered that a self-professed Luddite like my ex would actually join Facebook and therefore have unfettered access to my bio (because of the casual, half-hearted way I registered, I never bothered making my account private). The concept that he would be able to surreptitiously keep tabs when I had gone to such lengths to cut him off from every part of my life nearly made me sick. I also hated the immediate impulse I had to check his own account to see if he was still going out with the girl he'd left me for (luckily, Meredith told me he had made his account private, which prevented me from actually carrying through with that self-destructive little urge).
As soon as I cancelled my account, I went back to check to ensure that it was gone. When I put in my email, Facebook scanned my email's address book to see who also had an account. My old roommates, Aaron and Michelle, popped up as having Facebooks. I suspected that they had decided they didn't like me anymore after I moved out (for reasons I don't fully understand), but seeing them with Facebooks that they never invited me really, really hurt. I had tried so hard to be good friends to the both of them, and though there was some friction surrounding my move, I expected us to stay that way. Apparently not.
So goodbye, Facebook. You were clearly created only to inspire drama, and I will have none of it.