This morning when I checked my FaceBook account I had 31 friend requests and 117 other miscellaneous requests and notifications. As I think about the time it will take to get caught up, I absolutely dread it. I have to click through profiles, figure out if I really know those requesting my online friendship—or if they are randomly trying to befriend people so they can inundate inboxes with junk emails. I am sure there will be people I am happy to hear from, but the energy it will take overwhelms me. I have been avoiding FaceBook with the same passion as bill collectors. Am I alone here?
I am not sure why I have resisted advances in social networking. I blog and email, isn’t that enough? Creating profiles and exchanging information online wasn’t even on the radar as a teenager in the nineties. The most my high school classmates hoped for was a couple of pictures in the year book and being crowned class clown or most likely to earn a million dollars before thirty. It baffles me how at the young age of 31, I’m a dinosaur because I don’t use my smart phone to check-in with FaceBook every hour.
Newsflash...While I encourage online dating sites, meeting men on social networking sites is virtually impossible. The only thing these sites are useful for is investigating someone you’ve met via other means or tracking them down later. I never found much use for MySpace until I needed it to track down an ex who owed me money. Bastard. (Ooops, did I say that out loud?) Guys with 400 female friends—all of whom look like they used their XM centerfold to create their profile—are not the type of guys you want to settle down with.
When I first got on FaceBook late last year, I felt I had almost completely missed the boat. It was like a co-worker having said, “Let’s get Starbucks” and I leaned in and asked, “What’s that?” How deep was the hole I had been living in? Discovering this new form of rich mocha latte that was free, at the tip of my fingers and close as my computer screen—it only took a few days before I was hooked. An absolute addict. I was on FaceBook before work, during lunch and at the end of the day. Each time I looked at a friend’s profile or found a long lost BFF, it was like taking another deep gulp of caffeine crack.
Then one day, I got over it. It was like realizing that Dunkin Donuts had pretty good coffee too. I no longer craved “social-networking” Starbucks or sending and receiving gifts on FaceBook. I didn’t have time to update my status or see what a friend in California was doing with her extra 3 hours late into the evening. I went from one extreme to the other. Even as email notifications in my inbox taunted me, I managed to go months without logging in.
The crazy thing is, my reluctance yields nothing—I am still plugged into the machine. I cannot escape. It dictates my life whether I pay attention or not. I have missed critical updates from friends and family, because I haven’t logged on. Friends have said, “You didn’t know? I posted it on FaceBook.” This is true FaceBook frenzy. Give in or tempt fate. Advance or regress. Use FaceBook or risk extinction with the rest of the dinosaurs.
Thank God!!!!! It's not just me. I also found Facebook late last year and was an instant addict!!! I was checking it every chance I got and if I went a whole day without checking in, I would experience withdrawal pangs that would rival those of any crack addict. LOL Then it happened...one day without checking in turned to two, and then two days turned to a week, and so on. And guess what...I survived. But now I find myself inundated with emails from friend checking to make sure I'm ok...because they haven't seen me on FB in awhile. How do I say to my friends that I'm not on FB because I'm busy living my life, when in their opinions FB is the daily, minute-by-minute, post-by-post, story of their lives? Better yet, why is it that I can call, text, and email my best friend and not get a response, but if I post a note on her FB wall, I hear back in a matter of minutes? Are we that plugged in...is it THAT serious???
Add all of that to the fact that they changed the format that I was once so comfortable with...and I find that I am quickly (and easily) regressing to my pre-FB self. But will this regression signal the end of this perceived sense of connectivity that I have with friends (old and new)???
Only time...or the next social networking revolution will tell. :-)
Posted by: GiGi | April 15, 2009 at 12:00 PM