I finally joined Facebook. I held out for quite a while: I’m old-fashioned enough to prefer communication via the more direct methods (email is about my technological limit) and having as my friends people I actually know. I signed up mostly for communication with overseas relatives and so I could post on the Internet Movie Database.
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But within days my Facebook page seemed to take on a life of its own. I received ‘‘friend’’ requests from a couple of people I had gone to school with but never spoken to (our paths simply never crossed).
From the people I ‘‘friended’’, all manner of minutiae began accumulating. Do I really need to know someone’s leaving work for the day? I thought that level of banality was reserved for Twitter (no, I don’t tweet).
I haven’t spent time making my page fancy; I haven’t even uploaded a photo of myself. My name is sufficiently uncommon that I doubt I’ll be mistaken for anyone else – in fact, I seem to be the only Ron Cerabona online. (Yes, I googled myself – don’t tell me you haven’t). Maybe if I dig deep enough I’ll find a namesake but I’d rather preserve my comforting illusion of uniqueness.
Now I’m getting Facebook announcements that my friends are now friends with someone else – even a company. How nice. There’s a suggestion to view one of my ‘‘friend’s’’ profiles to get ideas for mine, as though it isn’t good enough. A Facebook page feels a bit like having a badly organised, passive-aggressive and not very intimate ‘‘friend’’.
I’m also being told somebody I’ve never heard of and I have ‘‘4 mutual friends’’ with a suggestion that I add this stranger as a friend. Good grief. And, of course, there’s the unnerving knowledge that all this – like so many online postings – remains forever viewable by anyone. I can see how people become obsessed with Facebook. I can also see how it can become a destructive force emblematic of an increasingly alienated society: remember the woman who announced on Facebook she was committing suicide and did so while her many ‘‘friends’’ discussed whether she was serious but did nothing to help?
And I also understand why some of my friends – the real-world ones – have not signed up to Facebook. I’m seriously thinking about rejoining them.
