Facebook

Matthew is…tired of playing these head games. Moving out as of tomorrow morning.
Allison is…missing her Dad today - R.I.P. July 14th, 1997.
Jackie is…looking forward to getting rid of all the emotional baggage - so long Daniel!
James is…on his way home from Qatar with very little money and too many memories.
Facebook. I don’t know how many of you have signed up for this little social experiment but let me tell you, it can be incredibly addictive. This is what happens, essentially - you get your own profile, you find some old friends that haven’t seen you or heard from you in 1000 years, then find more friends…and they tell two friends, and so on, and so on…It’s a great idea, really. I’ve bumped into (or hunted down) a whole slew of people I hadn’t heard from in years. People who knew me way back when - when I was in grade eight and looked like a middle aged Laura Bush, when I was in high school and wore tie-dyed shirts and fought for Amnesty International, when I was in Switzerland and behaved like an incredible drunken fool. And I get to see who they’ve turned themselves into - the amazing part being how few people really change, the core of who they are is still so integrally them. Mostly.
It is nice to see them all, read about their kids, their spouses, their home improvement projects. Plus, everyone seems to have these handy little photo albums to browse through -very voyeuristic but I’m kind of like that so it suits me well.
So yes, it’s a wonderful little system and all of that, reconnecting us to people from across the globe as we never could really have been reconnected before. But there’s a downside. A surreal, slightly off-putting downside to tell you the truth. You see, there’s just no filter on Facebook. People forget they don’t actually know you anymore, don’t know things like what you take in your coffee or how you spend your Thanksgiving. Yet here they are, spilling all of their emotional beans all over the Internet. Inviting you into their dramas - and in a way, all of their friends’ dramas - without knowing much at all about you other than you used to both really enjoy the Footloose soundtrack.
But there’s just no way around getting involved in their emotional beans - especially when they drop intriguing little one liners like “Victoria is…finally ready to just do it already!! I’m not afraid anymore!!” Well now I just need to find out more, don’t I? What was Victoria afraid of, and how is she getting past it? Naturally one becomes quite the Internet detective - once offered the first little tidbit I must then delve deeper into the ‘Profile’ for any sort of helpful clues, look at pictures for hints to solve the mystery, read Wall postings (which are little notes sent back and forth on people’s profiles available for public consumption) and generally stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong. But it’s just so darn tempting!
And everyone seems to want you to know as much as they can tell you about their lives, good, bad or ridiculous. Something along the lines of a twenty-four hour commercial starring you as the main product. Not my strong suit - I generally get a lot of emails from people who knew me way-back-when querying; “Holy Heck, are all of those kids YOURS??” and then one or two from some old acquaintances who knew me as a Nanny in Switzerland; “I can’t believe you had kids!! I’m so scared for them - you were AWFUL with children!!”. (I’m better now, I swear!) So pretty much no showing off for me.
The verdict is still out for Facebook in my opinion. It’s really fantastic in a way to find all of these people you remember from when you were five or fifteen or twenty-five. To know who really DID become a doctor like he’d always dreamed, who is living in Amsterdam with her husband and who is divorcing her childhood sweetheart. But in a way, I miss the people I thought they would turn out to be. Better, worse or indifferent. And do I really want my MAJOR crush of grades nine through twelve to see a picture of me washing dishes with a towel on my head at eight months pregnant? You decide…