... a.k.a. Why
Sucks !(by someone who's tried and tested it)
Abashed and repeatedly chided at being the only living specimen of the human persuasion without a Facebook account, I finally set up a little thingy of my own (in my own name, lest anonymity should offend). So eager was I to make my relationship with Facebook work, that I even uploaded a blurred picture of self (yeps blurred: self is still paranoid about images of self on the net).
It was easy: I set my password, got the confirmation email, uploaded above-mentioned pic, then I stared at the screen. What next? Completing my profile seemed to be the next logical step, but who the heck would want to know about my musical interests or favourite TV program? And more importantly, would I want to draw anyone dull enough to be interested in these things to my account?
So I asked Audrey, a Facebook afficionado, what the big deal was, and she told me that I was just not getting it: the main point behind Facebook was to re-establish and maintain contact where contact had long been lost. Phrased like that, keeping Facebook alive sounded like a mission worthy of The Enterprise. And I am sentimental and soppy enough to immediately have fallen in love with said mission: so many of the kids I knew in primary school seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth, it would have been nice to see who they turned out to be years later.
So off I went searching for all the kids in my Year Six class. Sadly, I only found one guy who I remembered repeatedly wetting his pants in Kindergarten - definitely not "add a friend" material. I tried some of the girls in my secondary school, but the problem is that we women change names when we get married - only two of the fallen-off-the-face-of-the-earth girls resurfaced on Facebook.
So I started trying to hunt down people I knew at Sixth Form and University. And here I hit the virtual jackpot! There was Joanne thanks to whom I ended with an acid burn on my top one day, and ... geeeeeeeeeeeeez, Ramon has grown into a slob! But he used to be funny so I added him anyway. By the end of the third eve I had some ten contacts, and I was getting friend requests from, sometimes remote, acquaintances past and present. By the fifth night I was friends with Ramon's wife's sister even!
I was however slightly uneasy because I'd realized that I could see everyone's contacts even if they weren't my 'friends’: what right did I have to spy on who other people knew? More importantly, what right did Facebook have to make private things so public by default? And how come when Joanne uploaded a picture of us together, and tagged me, the picture was immediately associated with my account for all to enjoy my atrocious dress sense at the time!
What's worse, the evil mastermind behind Facebook seemed to be scanning my friends and using its machinations to suggest to me people I would be interested in - and often getting it right. Clearly there was more of a Big Brother behind this one than Audrey would have made me believe.
However I was determined to let my willingness to make this work beat my paranoia. So I changed my status. "I've got Facebook, I have friends ... Now what?", I asked my contacts.
I shouldn’t have asked really: I got badgered for pictures of self and kids (making it increasingly uncomfortable to wriggle out of it with a lame "sorry, against my policy") and I got referred to tonnes of senseless quizzes with flattering results (I seem to have a 0.01% chance of getting swine flu - like the other 5 people I know who took it - have an A+ knowledge of Biology - like Audrey, Ramon and Joanne incidentally - and my General Knowledge seems to be off the Richter scale). Then I also got to know life-altering facts about my "friends" like that it was Karen - not her husband James - who'd first changed a nappy, that Joanne would blow her first million on a luxurious car and cruise and that Martina ranks completely unbitchy (must have changed a lot since sixth form, it seems). And by the way, my prim and proper colleague Mae, the Religion teacher, seemed to be playing something called ‘Mafia Wars’ all the time.
And there I was, trying to "comment" amicably and press polite "Likes" every now and then, while screaming internally, "Who the fuck cares?".
Audrey insisted the reason I still didn’t get it was that Facebook needs time to grow on you and meantime I should try to find interesting groups. Well I wasn’t too sure of wanting Facebook to grow on me and, besides, this finding groups idea sounded too much like going to Youth Fellowship to catch a guy for my liking, the only difference being that the Facebook equivalent of "catching a guy" seemed to be "get" more friends.
But I’m a sport by nature (sic!), so I looked up my home town and became a member of our group, totalling 124 in all. I also made three friends from there (yeah, my death-count’s going up!), got invited to become a fan of a Carol Woytila group (somehow the notion struck me as distasteful) and I even looked up the Pjazzagroup just so you all know: nothing happening there, absolutely nothing! I still don’t get why groups exist really: my hometown group has a forum in which the same person posted some eight to ten topics, with no one ever bothering to reply. So I had to conclude that groups simply function to fill up the virtual CV of boring Facebook people, while providing an excellent friend monti.
Then, one fine day, the whole point of Facebook hit me. The status on Louisanne’s wall hit me, really. Louisanne, my sixth-form class mate (and 438 friends, please note) suggested we organize a class meet and everyone was leaving excited Likes and Comments on her wall. "Everyone", here ,includes yours truly. Was I excited to be meeting up with her and Karen and the rest after so many years! We do tend to lose contact with quite a few people over the years and it’s a shame, isn’t it? I was so evidently hyped that Audrey grew smug about having been proven right about the merits of Facebook after all.
Finally our big date arrived and off I went … and we dined, and wined a bit. And then I realised, maybe thanks to the wine but probably thanks to the company, where the real evil of Facebook lay.
I wore a big smile and was nodding, giggling, snapping photos and feigning excitement at everyone’s stories right on cue. But that was it really: I was faking it. No great "sparks of the past" had been re-ignited. Karen was sweet but her stories were as boring as ever, Ramon may have been funny but I’d clean forgotten how he used to make me want to puke every time he started talking about his women, Louisanne still got on my nerves by being sickeningly considerate and Joanne was still the attention-seeking-would-be-rebel she was at 16 … oh and remember Martina? If she were to be judged by the stuff she actually said about her current workmates, that bitch-factor quiz she did on Facebook got it completely wrong! Of course I know that that night they must have all been reminded of whatever turn-off they all saw in me before we "lost touch", but that’s not my point here ...
You see, I looked around the table that night and it dawned on me that our little gathering was a clear explanation of why people lose contact over the years: some people are simply incompatible! In less politically correct terms, some people just don’t like each other enough to make the effort to stay in touch. In fact, the truth of the matter is that losing touch is a lengthy and sensitive process that takes years to complete to perfection with neither party’s feelings being injured. It is an important process that gets us rid of some of the needless baggage in our lives.
And now here was Facebook threatening to bring a mine of dead relationships back to haunt me, filling my life with the zombies of friendships past. But I had seen the light. I congratulated myself on my insight as I drove home and I knew my Facebook account was as good as dead to me. I might not delete it, so as not to offend, but I’d simply ignore it.
Except that ,of course, that week I’d drop in because we were supposed to pool our pictures of this evening. It wouldn't be polite to simply disappear ... And I had to drop in occasionally to check on Ramon’s wife’s sister’s reports of the newly-hatched budgies ... And Joanne had promised to post the sex of her baby on her wall the moment she knew it ... Yes, I may keep dropping in every now and then. After all, there may even be another meet some day and I could be interested. I mean it hadn’t been exactly a bad idea to meet - we’d all laughed a lot, hadn’t we? And we’d shared so much together a decade or so ago and really, it was good to meet occasionally. Besides, what harm could there be in receiving a virtual bouquet or taking part in a typing maniac challenge every now and then? And anyway, if I left Facebook what would become of the tomatoes on my Farmville farm?
Oh, who was I fooling? I was just as embroiled in it all as Michael Corleone was in his Part III, but I was simply still new enough to naively think one could get out of Facebook.
Now I no longer am. I know now that "out" is not an option: Facebook not only sucks, it also sucks you in!
(And by the way if a few seconds ago you asked yourself, "Part III of what?", I doubt that you'll ever be "add as a friend" material to me ... )
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