Functionally ReTodded

I signed up for Facebook the first time about 18 months ago or so.  It seemed a lot of people were on it.  Sadly, no one I knew was.

Let me say this about social networking on the information super worldwide highway.  I hate it.  I take that back.  I hated it.  everyone was running around yukking it up about MySpace, and I thought MySace sucked.  MySpace has proven time and time again to be the vast wasteland of pedophilia, random spamming and nothing of any real use.  There’ve been moms guilty of making their daughters’ rivals commit suicide, there’ve been breakups, pedophile-arranged meetings with kids whose parents should know what 14 year olds are doing on the internet, etc.

All it consisted of was people making eye-gougingingly ugly and retarded themes that weren’t well designed, didn’t fit the page, had pathetic content and nothing ever happened.  It was instant messaging with a music video or something attached, or some punk ass posting "Yo! Hit me up!" all over the place, hoping to have the most MySpace pals of all.

No thank you.

So this fall, I started getting emails about folks friending me in Facebook.  I thought the term "friending" was gay.  I thought the process of friending was gay.  And after seeing THIS youtube video , I thought "Well, here’s another web app that’s all the rage that will flame out quicker than Geocities."

But I have to admit I was wrong.

In the months that followed, I was friended by and talked with many people I hadn’t talked to in a long time, and in some cases, a VERY long time.  I also found that people I knew seemed to know other people I knew but neither knew that the other knew me.

To that end, I want to talk about some of my odder Facebook experiences as they relate to Friendings (which I guess is what I will call it now), and would be interested in hearing about yours.

I’ll also tell you the stuff I like about Facebook outside of the people part.  And I’ll tell you about the stuff I don’t like.

The first odd Friending I had / made / did (or whatever the fuck that would be called), was with a girl I met in line while trying to early vote.

** Sidenote:  I’m 40.  Why do I still refer to adult females as girls?  Shouldn’t I say woman?  I think I refer to all females my age and under as girls and the ones that are older than me as women.  Is that wrong?  **

So as I was meandering in line for SEVEN FREAKING HOURS, it was inevitable that you would begin making small talk with a few people in front of and behind you to pass the time.

After a few hours I had learned that this girl was a mother of three going thru or getting a divorce.  She had a three kids (I’ll keep specifics out for privacy’s sake) and around lunchtime, I found that despite our similar places in life, she was now my personal and official vote cancel outer.

We discussed lots of issues quite calmly (unlike the koolade drinkers around us), talked about kids, families, and other small talk.  And then, sometime around lunch (I ordered a couple of pizzas from my friend’s pizza establishment to share with some of my voting friends, and he delivered four and said I could pay whenever as I had no money or checks), she found out that she had to leave since her ex or about to be ex couldn’t watch the kids anymore.

I said that it was nice meeting her and she pulled out her iPhone and said "Are you on facebook?"

I said yeah, told her my name and she added me.

Since then, we’ve talked occasionally about a variety of things from the octo-mom, politics, her child that was in Scotish Rite for a few days, mutual acquaintances, etc.  If it were ten or twenty years ago, we wouldn’t have exchanged numbers and stayed in touch, but Facebook makes that easier.

Another odd one was a guy I threw darts with and against back in the day in the Buckhead Dart League .  He threw on a team out of a bar where we’d become friends with the owner, and we always had a great time with them.

So out of the blue, I get a friend request from this guy.  I say sure, and then I see "Friends you have in common" and the girl I mentioned above is listed.

WTF?

So I ask her, and she says they went to high school together.  Made me laugh a couple times, that did.

The other two really bizarre ones were from people I knew in college.

I’ll preface this by saying I wasn’t the person that had 6,000 friends at college.  We had a group of about ten of us that hung out together and another ten or so girls that were associated by fraternity affiliation, roommates of girlfriends, etc. I liken my college experience and the time after to the movie "The Big Chill," in that I haven’t stayed close and in touch with those people, but we shared a closeness way back then that kind of bonds us.

Anyway, "Fred" was a fraternity brother of two of my roommates.  As they were in the same pledge class, they hung out together and, when not at the house, we all hung out together.  Fred had a cool condo and was a nice kid that had never consumed so much as communion wine to the best of my knowledge.  We did our best to corrupt him, but more or less failed.

The last time I’d seen Fred was in ‘96 at a football game.  Nothing since.

One morning about a month ago, I was getting ready for work and said to myself "Hey, I think I’ll look up Fred today."

Fast forward fifteen minutes, and as I’m on my way to work I get an email saying "Fred" has friended you.

Insert twilight zone theme here.

We talked a good bit and caught up on folks we knew, work, families, etc., and it was nice.

(As you may notice, I’m a pretty good reminiscer, as if that’s actually a word).

I also found my freshman year roommate thru his younger brother on Facebook.  His younger brother was about 7 or so when we were in college, but Michael was nice enough to update me on Rob and even sent me an e-mail address for him.

I found Matt from Falmouth, MA who went on to become a Vet and had a big family, not unlike the one he came from.  I’ve looked for other folks, but had not much luck.

But the one most folks find strangest is this one.

My now wife and I broke up when I went to college.  I know that’s a shocker.  Dude goes to college and breaks up with girlfriend for greener grass.  Blah blah blah.

During the two years between when I went to college and when she and I got back together, I dated a girl for about a year or so.  She was roommates with a girl one of my roommates was dating.

It was as serious as a one year relationship at college could be, but I wasn’t ready to commit (or at least not to her it would seem), so we broke it off and that was that.  We’d see each other occasionally on campus and were cordial, and then everyone went on with their lives.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, and I am Facebooking away and decide to look up some folks from college.  So I throw her name in there and there she is.  After a brief pause, I click the "Friend insert name here."

I expect no response.  I mean, I wasn’t the best boyfriend ever, it had been twenty years and in the end, clicking "Ignore" is pretty easy.

But she didn’t.

So we ended up catching up via Facebook chat. I talked to GBD about it to make sure she didn’t mind, which of course she didn’t.  She knows I’m reminiscy (again, not a word) about school, so no big deal.

So we talked about our respective roommates and the stuff we’d learned or heard about all of them since college, we caught up on our families, especially our kids, and were talking about our respective marriages.  She knew GBD at least a little bit while we were at college, and I told her that it sounded like we’d both done well in the spouse department, and she replied simply "Looks can be very deceiving."

So I ask, and she tells me why her marriage isn’t as super as it looks.  I’m leaving out the details for deniability just in case.

I feel terrible for her.  She’s a nice person.  Although her parents are not far away, she’s more or less alone.  She is from a small town.  Although she lives in a big town now, she doesn’t have a big pile of friends.  She has a couple, but for one reason or another she can’t confide in them the entire story, so I told her she could tell me. I mean, who was I gonna tell?

So she did.  She asked for my opinion about stuff, vented about stuff, and was able to just talk thru the circles and questions one has to talk thru when this happens in one’s life. It always comes back to the same thing, and it’s not "Can you forgive?"

It’s "Can you forget?"

After some serious deliberation and consideration for the kids, herself, and even him (although he doesn’t deserve it), she decided that she couldn’t, and that it was time for a divorce.

So now it’s a whirlwind of lawyers, papers, bank stuff, kid stuff, assets, houses, blah blah blah.  But in the end, it’s the fact that a nice girl that I knew in college is in a really bad place and wants to be able to put her kids to bed and then vent about this stuff without poisoning them or worrying about which friend of theirs she can talk to and which ones she can’t.  So I let her tell me.

The reason I tell you this story is that I’ve told it to other people I know, and the vast majority think it’s wrong and terrible and evil that I’m in contact with this person.  I disagree (obviously) but I’d like to know what you think.

(Insert awkward transition here)

Which brings me to the stuff that i like and don’t like about Facebook.  Here are my likes:

Mob Wars, Metropolis, Writing on peoples’ wall, scrabble, status updates, kid pictures and high school and college pictures.

Here are the things I don’t like:

Flair.  Every app saying I need to grant access and wanting to post updates on everything I or anyone else does, 99.999% of the groups and causes, the dumbass ads on the side, especially the jerkoff in the wife beater sitting in a Ferrari saying "I only have a GED and I make a grand a day."  I don’t like every single app saying "Invite your friends to…"  I don’t like when people leave the IS at the beginning of their status update so it says "Joe is went to the mall."  I don’t like that people don’t know the difference between sending a message and writing on a wall (WHICH IS PUBLIC)!

So Facebookers, what do you like or not like?