Lately I have started a facebook page and I notice that when I send a message along with a friend request, I usually phrase it something like this – I say “I have succumbed to facebook.”
It’s weird to ask someone to be your friend a second or two pass whereby I am reduced to being the kid on the outside – a recurring nightmare of my face pressed up against a window where all manner of warm and wonderful delights are going on and me in danger of missing out. But people are who they are and enough has been written on sophisticated technology used to relay the most banal of information.
Recently I decided to look up friends from school – when I was doing my MA in Montreal at Concordia University. It was in 1995-98 but feels like the middle ages. When I began this experiment I wondered if I really wanted to know what happened to these people. I tried to conjure up reasons for the rift. Was it timing? A fight? Often it’s like much of the past – murky, hazy. So it’s weird. I’m older and now no longer look the same as I did then. When someone friends me I look for signs of age – it’s impossible not to be struck by what was and what is. I remember a passage from Solzhenitsyn from the Gulag Archipelago about men who spent years in prison granted infrequent visits from their wives who deteriorated at an unfair rate – because time was not leavened with experience. So we look for pictures, clue as to who these people are now and get the aging part over with..
I have always been somewhat reclusive, like to hold my cards fairly close to my chest, and this new world of self promotion is truly baffling. You might think that this isn’t true because I have a blog but that’s another interesting experiment and one that has also been a mixed blessing. Blogs are great because there is an anonymity factor at play. Unlike facebook, the blog is only peripherally about me. What I like, places I go but very few images of me exist in my posts and my opinion has a tangential quality. I am the type of person who talks myself into things by coming up with a theory, however inadequate. I rarely just jump in being somewhat neurotic and skeptical about all things new. So, here’s the kind of rationale that really worked for me and one that I know most of you will relate to – I have a hate/love relationship with the notion of my thoughts being made public. The obvious reason is that I fear being stalked – nothing love obsessed more the terrifyingly banal identity theft variety. If everyone has access to my page (words) they would descend on me like vultures.
Oy vey I say and I am not even Jewish (although I am a proud honorary Jew – it’s about where I grew up which conversation could segue back to facebook although I am finding that most roads lead to facebook hence the inevitable surrender) but I digress.
Okay – Once I took the plunge and presented my aching vulnerabilities to the world, I realized that no one really cared, they were all too busy presenting themselves to the world and waiting for the world to respond. So now this thing – this blog – has assumed a much more interesting place for me. It occupies a kind of nether zone and I so love nether zones – being someone who appreciates irony more than almost anything. So I post as if I am being read (which forces me to have some sort of interior editor – unlike the horrid personal diary), but am relieved that what I say does not really matter – it ain’t exactly the NY Times. No, it’s bunny island and for those of you who are interested, I am the bunny and yes, this blog is my island. So do I think that what I say matters? Yes, but only a bit and that makes me happy.
When I gave myself over to facebook, I was happy that the friends I reconnected with have real lives, seem grounded and, most importantly, display at least one recent photo. That certainly increased my security level. So I am pleased that the ickiness factor has passed somewhat making my facebook experiment successful thus far – but then again so far I haven’t been on either side of the great ‘defriending.”
“De-friending” is one of those things devised specifically for Facebook. BF (Before Facebook–or would they use the more politically correct BFE–Before Facebookian Era?) you never “de-friended” any of your real friends. If one or both of you had a good reason, you just stopped being friends. Then you would say, “We used to be friends” or “We don’t like each other anymore.” The word would spread around town, and that would be that.
I guess, though, since your Facebook friends aren’t real friends anyway, the word “de-friending” is acceptable, kind of like “logging out” of a virtual relationship.