The Star Wars Action Figure collection that is Facebook
So my online time has been radically altered by adding Facebook to the tabs that automatically open when I launch my browser. I initially set up an account a few months ago, because Lindsey, one of the people in the Captel Warcraft guild, had pictures of me from a party she'd had, and I could see the pictures by signing up.
Then a few weeks ago, I got a notification of a friend request from someone I'd gone to high school with. Which was very cool, and inspired me to look up some more high-school peeps I hadn't heard from or thought about in forever.
And it went on from there. Now I'm finding soc.motssers and people I'd lived with at the co-op; there's still some exploring to do for school friends and such, but I've really gotten into having such an easy way to keep tabs on all these people from my past. I've amassed 68 friends thus far, and it's really kinda cool, competing with people for high scores on the various games they have, chatting with random old acquaintances, etc etc.
One of the little applications they have on Facebook is a Star Wars action-figure gifting thing. Yet another intriguing flash from the past. I was the perfect age for collect-them-all consumerism when the Star Wars movies came out, and my friends and I spent a lot of time playing with the figures and ships and playsets. And seeing the figures again brought it all back - the little nubs on the Tusken Raider's head, Hammerhead's drapey blue swimsuit, the light sabers embedded in everyone's arms - what terrific toys they were. I'm sad that I don't have them anymore, but I eventually chopped them into little bits with a big knife and buried them in my backyard.
And while I don't currently intend to do the same thing with my Facebook friends, there's a kind of similarity there, between collecting pictures of beloved childhood toys and finding long-lost friends on Facebook. Because actually having the toys would be significant - aside from the monetary value of having what's become collector's items, you'd have the actual physical object you'd played with for so much time as a child. Rather than remembering what the Tusken Raider's nubs felt like, you could feel them; you could feel what it was like to move their arms and legs, instead of just remembering it; it would all move from memory to experience.
Same with all these people I'm collecting now. I have their writing and pictures of them now, and can remember what a great smile so-and-so had, or how frustrating it could be to deal with someone-else when they were on a tear, but I'm not really dealing with them on a face-to-face level; with many of my Facebook friends I'm not even exchanging any kind of directed communication.
Still, though, Facebook provides a pretty impressive portal into the past (alliteration alert!), where all these significant names in my history are invoked on a regular basis, and I can hear them and be reminded of how much I have lived, how many people I have known, and this constant reminder helps reinforce the sense of connection with a larger world that can be so difficult to maintain, now that community as a concept has fallen so much out of the picture.
I dunno, it's cool. I haven't logged in on Warcraft for significant playtime in weeks, so it must be doing something right.
Then a few weeks ago, I got a notification of a friend request from someone I'd gone to high school with. Which was very cool, and inspired me to look up some more high-school peeps I hadn't heard from or thought about in forever.
And it went on from there. Now I'm finding soc.motssers and people I'd lived with at the co-op; there's still some exploring to do for school friends and such, but I've really gotten into having such an easy way to keep tabs on all these people from my past. I've amassed 68 friends thus far, and it's really kinda cool, competing with people for high scores on the various games they have, chatting with random old acquaintances, etc etc.
One of the little applications they have on Facebook is a Star Wars action-figure gifting thing. Yet another intriguing flash from the past. I was the perfect age for collect-them-all consumerism when the Star Wars movies came out, and my friends and I spent a lot of time playing with the figures and ships and playsets. And seeing the figures again brought it all back - the little nubs on the Tusken Raider's head, Hammerhead's drapey blue swimsuit, the light sabers embedded in everyone's arms - what terrific toys they were. I'm sad that I don't have them anymore, but I eventually chopped them into little bits with a big knife and buried them in my backyard.
And while I don't currently intend to do the same thing with my Facebook friends, there's a kind of similarity there, between collecting pictures of beloved childhood toys and finding long-lost friends on Facebook. Because actually having the toys would be significant - aside from the monetary value of having what's become collector's items, you'd have the actual physical object you'd played with for so much time as a child. Rather than remembering what the Tusken Raider's nubs felt like, you could feel them; you could feel what it was like to move their arms and legs, instead of just remembering it; it would all move from memory to experience.
Same with all these people I'm collecting now. I have their writing and pictures of them now, and can remember what a great smile so-and-so had, or how frustrating it could be to deal with someone-else when they were on a tear, but I'm not really dealing with them on a face-to-face level; with many of my Facebook friends I'm not even exchanging any kind of directed communication.
Still, though, Facebook provides a pretty impressive portal into the past (alliteration alert!), where all these significant names in my history are invoked on a regular basis, and I can hear them and be reminded of how much I have lived, how many people I have known, and this constant reminder helps reinforce the sense of connection with a larger world that can be so difficult to maintain, now that community as a concept has fallen so much out of the picture.
I dunno, it's cool. I haven't logged in on Warcraft for significant playtime in weeks, so it must be doing something right.