Oh Facebook, I avoided you for a long time. You just seemed like another MSN wannabe that would invade my personal privacy and waste my precious internet time. Email after email let me know that friends had named me as a friend (woohoo) and tagged me in photos, which was kinda unnerving but fine- and I ignored them all. The break came when a friend, over the phone (key difference), told me to join because I had to read her profile- and this is a very funny, very wrong friend so I caved.
First came the confusion: what does this do? How do I get there? How do I find people? And of course, indignation- no Facebook can not have the password to my email so it can send an email to everyone in my contact list. But that was it. I found out that my profile is hidden to all those who aren't in my network or who I invite- but that you can see how many friends a person has and anyone can see how many friends you have.
Then the trouble started- very quickly Facebook became a popularity contest and with anything that is stupid, I fell into the stupid well. I started analyzing my profile like a freak- second guessing everything I had written. I grew paranoid that my answers were stupid and revealed me for the vapid nerd I am and that people would mock me endlessly. I was checking it religiously and comparing how many friends I had compared to ex-friends from high school and the such. I also wanted my wall to grow.... I needed the wall posts.
Then during a commerical break in Iron Chef, when I got up to check to facebook- I realized I had a problem. I had to step back, pause, reflect. I realized that who I had become on Facebook was not an accurate protrait of me, and really, I like me quite a bit. There was silence, and then acceptance. I was obsessed and getting freaky. I added all the dorky components back to my profile and left wall posts that weren't edited five times for grammer and coolness. I embrace that I am as dorky on Facebook as I am in life and that if people think I am mad... well they are probably quite boring so who cares.
All this in 24 hours. It was a crazy day.
Now, I'm not saying I'm not a little OCD about Facebook- I still go on quite often and post a lot but I've found that it's an awesome way to contact friends that you otherwise would have never ever seen again. All my katimafriends have posted wonderful photos of our travels and I've contacted a lot of friends from home that I haven't seen since high school. But now I have a new thing- how many friends is too much? I have 61 which may yet get larger cause I have some friends who should be on Facebook but arent (cough-sheenaadriennekayla) but I've seen people with 100 to 250 friends and that's just rather silly. I mean, I can't keep up with all my friends right now.
Yeah. My pink and blue sock still isn't done. I ran out of yarn and they aren't high enough so I'm doing the last five inches in black ribbing. I hope they'll look all right. If I can steal someone's digital camera I'll let you know.
Okay- my tangent for the day is done. And if blogger doesn't crash when I go to post this all will be right in the world.
3 comments:
That explains all the updates I was getting on you taking people out... and then putting them back in to your music list.
And yes, I too wonder about how many friends to have.
Facebook = Crack.
That is all.
Wow! I could have written this! I've had a facebook account for about a year, but done nothing with it. Then a couple of weeks ago, someone I used to work with added me as a friend. I was going to ignore it, but I saw him in person the next day, and he ordered me to friend him back. This started a downward spiral. I think I've finally got a handle on it, but I'm still spending more time on Facebook at the moment than I am on any other site (including the WD and blurty, which is really saying something!). I'll probably get bored of it soon, but at the moment, it's addictive!
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