Well I suppose it's my fault. No one twisted my arm or anything. No one said, hey, by the way, you have to get a facebook account or you might as well jump off the lame cliff with all the other technophobes out there. The truth is, being on facebook doesn't make you skinnier, prettier, or even, younger!
So why did I join facebook?
Simply because I like to consider myself on the cutting edge of all that is the internet. Simply because I can't admit that somewhere along the way I lost that edge while being consumed with school and it's dealings. Simply put, facebook has been my downfall.
As soon as I joined and realized that it is pretty unpalatable, my first bump in the facebook road arrived fresh on the heels of my distress over not being able to alter my profile to my liking, having to decipher all these weird applications, and more importantly, being overwhelmed by just how much I'd been missing on facebook while being a myspace addict. That bump was a supposed high school chum of mine who found me in the relatively easy manner of a few clicks because facebook tries to organize people into groups and then they give you the opportunity to search those groups. So someone in a matter of clicks went to the high school portion of their search page and clicked on my graduation year and bam! he wants to be my friend.
Problem is, I don't know him. Don't recognize his name, his face, or his attempts at jive talking. It's been FIFTEEN years since I started high school! Of course, there are some people I will, sadly, never forget. But this poor guy, I DO NOT KNOW. So do I ignore him? What do I do? I feel bad and made him a "friend." He has since gone on to actively doing things via facebook that I can hardly understand (some of those applications are WEIRD, it's not just because I am old...) and every time I log on there's a message or something from him. So now I just ignore him. Far be it from me to tell people how to go about using their time (unless it is the burnham, of course!). It is so easy to be "friends" with anyone on these sites.
This innocuous relationship somehow managed not to be the harbinger for the the even worse fate that was to come.
On other "socializing" sites, you are not always your given name. This manages to seclude you somehow from persons who want to look you up and find out how your life has been in the decade passed. Or, maybe their search engines are not as fucking good as facebook's. Whatever the case, I have been contacted by some guy I knew via the internet (turned out he wasn't a serial killer!) over a decade ago when the internet was still in it's embroynic state or what I call the Era of AOL and Compuserve. This guy I actually remembered even though we've never met in person. But more horrifyingly, he wants to catch up on lost time and I have no idea where we left off.
And even if in the murky depths of my brain I could sort out where we left off, WHO CARES? A DECADE has gone by and we never even met and until a couple days ago I did not even remember that name. It was put away. And now, I'm not sure what he wants. He seems to be saying that emailing back and forth for a while is just okay. I don't know what the something else is (maybe he is a serial killer in the making) but he is unable to ask outright and I am not interested in calling someone on the phone--I barely call my present tense friends on the phone!--or going to visit them or having them visit me--I barely...well you know!--so what else is there?
I have my own versions of this game and it never feels right: hello, do you remember me? You were my first love. I loved you more than life itself. I was fourteen, you were a couple months older than me, hee hee, at the time it seemed so much older...
hello, do you remember me? You were my best friend. I thought you were so great. We listened to oldies and made dance interpretations. It's been a decade, but how the heck are ya?
hello, do you remember me? You were my first boyfriend. I broke your heart and lost touch with you. I always think about you when I pass the house where you used to live. Will you be my friend?
Though it would be nice to find out if these people are still alive and well in the world, it would be nicer to remember them just the way I do, in a hazy blur of nostalgia.
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