Facebook and Faraway Friends

I think I've been on Facebook for almost three years.  I joined a few months after my husband when I saw how many old friends with whom he had been able to reconnect.  Both of us have lived in several different places throughout our lives and have collected friends along the way.  Inevitably, we lost touch with many of them, as happens in life, and Facebook opened up a whole new world to "staying in touch" with people.

I can totally understand the reluctance of certain friends who have lived in the same place all of their lives to sign up for Facebook.  If you've never moved around, and in and out of other people's lives, and you've stayed put in one general area all of your life; you might not want to be on Facebook.  This is my own conclusion, and not what any of these friends have shared with me; but if you've lived in the same place all your life you're probably close to the people you want to stay "in touch" with and "out of touch" with others you've chosen to stay out of touch with.  Why join Facebook and take the risk of reconnecting with someone who might still live around the block?  Maybe this surmising on my part is totally off track, but I don't think so.  I also get why some people don't join because they have careers where they need to have pretty rigid boundaries--such as doctors, teachers, etc.  Others don't join because they see Facebook as a total waste of time--which can totally be true.

What has become fascinating to me about Facebook over these last almost three years is the complexity of Facebook users, as a whole.  What can I say?  I loved my sociology class in college and group behavior fascinates me.  There are a variety of ways to use Facebook as an outlet of expression.  Some people only play the games (I play no games, so please don't send me any game requests.  I probably have all the games blocked anyway).  Some people view Facebook as their way to share the word of God and so they only post Scripture verses.  Others use Facebook as a way to rant about one thing or another.  Some people continually post things just to get people riled up, while others really contemplate their postings and only post what's on their heart.  A few people have to share each meal they've eaten, including how it was cooked.  Others end every sentence of their post with at least 2 !!.  I guess those people are trying to get across their point of how serious or excited they are about whatever they are posting.  Some people accept every single friend request while others keep their friend list to a select few.  I'm probably somewhere in the middle but if I don't recognize your name or there is more than 2 degrees of separation between us then I probably won't accept your friend request.  My mother-in-law finally joined after being one of the last in the family to succumb to Facebook when she kept asking why she didn't see certain pictures of her grandkids and our collective responses would be, "Well, I posted the pictures on Facebook."  The need to see pics of the grandkids was eventually too great to overcome.

You can learn a lot about people by what they post on Facebook, and I won't share every conclusion I've drawn about that because you've probably come up with your own theories if you've been on Facebook for any length of time.  If I have a pet peeve about Facebook it's the people who write cryptic posts like, "I've had the most horrible day...."  Well, what happened to you?  Did your dog die?  Did you get stuck in traffic?  Did McDonald's get your drive through order wrong?  Did you get fired from your job?  Really.  What was horrible?  The list of "horrible" things could go anywhere from the tragic to the mundane.  One of the first Facebook lessons I learned is that those people are only looking for attention--someone to bite and ask what happened.  I admit that I'm not one to bite.  If something it too personal to say in front of 500 Facebook friends then don't allude to it at all.  Every cryptic post leads each person to draw their own conclusion, and then to draw their own conclusions about you as a person.  That is Sociology 101.  Enough of my Facebook soapbox.

I typically post about my kids, something funny that happened, celebrating someone or something, share pictures, posts about my blog, etc.  If you ever see me post about something that brings confusion or leads you to question what's going on in my life, then let me know.  Because that is not my purpose for being on Facebook.  One of the best things about Facebook, that I realized from the very beginning, was being able to reconnect with people you haven't seen for any number of years.  In this "reconnecting" you can begin to believe that you really know what's going on in their lives.  But the true essence of us cannot be summed up in a year's worth of Facebook postings.  Most of us only share what we want others to know.  Along the way we realize that there are people with whom we are content to stay "connected" through each other's Facebook "walls"--which I think is an apt title--and others who we really want to see again.  We can make all sorts of plans to "have lunch" and "get together" with long lost friends, and some of those are honest attempts at reconnecting personally, but for most long, lost friendships the connection through Facebook feels sufficient.  It's probably best to remain that way in some circumstances.  There's a statistic that says that infidelity is up 200% since Facebook came into our lives.  If you're "reconnecting" with an old boyfriend or girlfriend in an inappropriate manner on Facebook then you've taken the "reconnection" too far.

Over the last year I have had the fabulous opportunity to get to see two friends who I hadn't seen since college and it probably wouldn't have happened without Facebook.  I love knowing bits and pieces of what's going on in my friends' lives--remember, you don't really know what's going on in their lives through wall postings--but you can at least read random musings and have a general idea of how they are doing.

I got to see my friend, Kimmie, last summer and I know I posted about getting to see her when I blogged about our Florida trip last year; but seeing Kimmie wouldn't have happened without Facebook.  Kimmie, I'm not sure what happened to all of my college pics with you.  We had some pretty crazy ones.  Sharon, here you go, girl.  It was great getting to catch up with you after so many years.  Memories fade but the true friendship never goes away.  Love you both.

Kimmie and me at her house last summer

Sharon and me in college--she had a particular memory about her dress

Loving on one of my best girlfriends

This was my dorm room, circa 1992

Me wearing one of Sharon's wigs.  I must have been trying to pose as a secret agent.  She looks like she's thinking, "When is this white girl going to give me my wig back?"

Sharon and me this summer attempting a crazy pose, but nothing is ever as crazy as college