the facebook phenomena

As a new initiate into the world of Facebook, I’m still learning its vernacular, subtleties and mechanics. My first impression is that Facebook is an oddly impersonal way of being personal. You post something out there on your wall for all of your friends to see (like a mass mailing, “Dear Occupant . . .”). THEN, they can respond with a comment at their leisure. While this is nice from a time shift perspective, it just rings a little “hollow” for me. At least e-mail is a direct exchange with one targeted friend. Perhaps this is indicative of my old age and my increasing inability to embrace the new. (I need to comment here that we have all lost the eloquence of the written word as evidenced by letters read in the Ken Burns documentary, “The Civil War.”) Give me some time though, I’m still grappling with the concept of social networking.

I do wish to take the opportunity here to personally thank Facebook for making me feel like a loser. It appears that most Facebook participants have hundreds, even thousands of friends. I have a grand total of nineteen friends and I don’t see that number increasing any time soon. Of the nineteen friends, one is my wife, another, my daughter, one is the teenager who mows my lawn (Hey, Taylor), and one is a total mistake. (Don’t worry, it’s none of you dear readers.) This only reinforces my impression of myself as a friendless hermit, lacking in social skills, unable to forge any deep emotional bonds. Yes, I could claim that my nineteen Facebook friends are CLOSE friends (Hey, Taylor), not gratuitous ones, but this is only true to a certain extent. Some of my “friends” are not responding to my “friend requests” or are not on Facebook. And did I mention that since joining Facebook, I HAVE managed to spook an old college girlfriend who must have thought I was stalking her (oh, yeah, come to think of it, make that EIGHTEEN friends)? I’m beginning to think Facebook is really an abbreviation for “In Your Face!” book . . .