A Puzzlement
In looking over my first week of being on Facebook (and Google+), I discovered a few things:
- I still keep my hobbies/activities close to my vest. Unlike my wife, who spent over an hour that first night on Facebook IM-ing with an old friend from high school, I've kept my involvement with FB to a minimum. I friend people, I read other people's entries, I search around to see who is or isn't on FB. Do I add stuff to my profile? No, not really. When I discovered that it took Google+ the better part of a day to absorb changes to my preferences on searches to my name or my employer, I've held back on adding info to my profiles.
- Friends are like hugs. Ever been to a con or a gathering where people are always giving each other hugs? Friending people on FB and G+ is like that. I wake up each day to find a few more friend requests trickling in, and I then spend some time trying to figure out if I recognize the name (and if I don't, what their connection is to me) and whether I should friend them back. This reticence toward friending manifests in other ways, too: sure, I'd like to follow some other people, but I always have a little voice in the back of my head that says "are you really their friend? No? Then why are you thinking about doing this?"
- Some of my best friends aren't on FB. (You know who you are!)
- I've scanned some of of my ex-high school and grade school classmates on FB, and what I've seen has pretty much confirmed to me that I made the right decision to cut the cord and move on with my life.
- My wife is more into Facebook than I am. Not that I'm of a "take-it-or-leave-it" opinion of it, but she is commenting and chatting with her FB friends more than I am.
- The vast majority of my FB friends are women. I'm not sure what this says about me, but I'm sure it says something.