Facebook is a quandary.
OK, so everyone is on it. Almost everyone it seems (175 million people and growing).
But it means many things to many people — a hobby, a distraction, a lifeline. The dynamics are many.
So here are the questions:
If your mom friends you, do you accept? Now I love my mom, but she doesn't hang out with my circle of friends. Would you ask your mom to join you at the pub? Wrong medium.
And what's up with all those high school acquaintances reappearing? It used to be that high school reunions happened once every 10 or 20 years. With Facebook, it's a perpetual leisurely locker stroll with no weekend closure.
And when the college connections start firing, it becomes a virtual version of "The Big Chill," except the gang doesn't disband after breakfast. We're all back together without the kegs and beer balls.
The most uncomfortable part of all this is the dynamic sidebar rendering of "People You May Know." Of course you remember these people, but how unsettling is it that you're ignoring them and, as the technology is symmetrical based on your common connection, they are ignoring you.
Facebook indeed has body language.
People approach this in different ways. One of my colleagues uses Facebook as a networking tool, calling it the new LinkedIn. He scrolls through his friend list and says almost everyone here is a colleague or former colleague.
Others view it as strictly friends, and are adamant about not friending co-workers or people from their high school just because they happened to graduate in the same year.
Still others treat it like some people approach LinkedIn, accumulating as many "friends" as they can to post bragging rights (their news feeds must as irrelevant as a Flock of Seagulls cassette).
So you're wired in catching up on people's lives, but you find yourself looking at cats and reading silly blurbs about people brushing their teeth or that they "tried a new soap today."
What gives?
Facebook is a perception changer. Those people you thought were interesting have too much time on their hands. And they're actually very boring.
So what do you do?
You block them from your newsfeed. You can defriend them, but then wallow in guilt.
But the ultimate guilt comes from when someone attempts to friend you and you have no intention of accepting. Instead of saying no, you ignore the request and it just sits there, hung up in the abyss. And this can go both ways. You see someone you thought liked you as a friend, you friend them, and they never accept.
It leaves you with the feeling of carrying your tray to the dining hall table just as the group sitting there gets up to leave.
Technology imitating life.
The future waxing nostalgia.
Body language.
Facebook is a quandary.
Yet here we are now.
Entertain us.
