I'm officially THAT old. It started with a fb account. "Open one, seriously, it's awesome, everyone is doing it." The latter portion of that sentence should have clued me in that it may not be a good idea. "Everyone is doing it ..." Indeed, everyone is doing it. In college some guy offered me a beer at a frat party because, "everyone was doing it." I declined (hate beer) and he stared into the wilderness, "but EVERYONE is doing it." It didn't make sense then, but apparently it makes sense to me now. Age and wisdom have not held hands in some areas of my life.
In the past few months it has become glaringly apparent that the "who" on FB apparently has a schizophrenic alter ego with several personalities. One page. One person. I think there should be rules that if your schizophrenic alter takes over and decides you might need 2 or 12 facebook pages with several versions of yourself to present to your 2 or 12 different groups of friends please pick one and defriend, block, and delete the others. Please pick one personality. Go with it. It's yours. All yours. And you aren't going to change that, no matter how many FB personalities you choose to create.
FB as a whole is a relatively new thing for me. I'm. That. Old. I opened an account with the sheer intention of keeping up with global friends. A retired USAF husband and a few dozen moves under our belt has left us with friends all over the world. Facebook seemed like a good way to keep in touch, post a few highlights about life, click send, and get it all out in the open with a select group of people I call friend. I do not have alot of friends. In fact, I recently noticed I have 293 and that seems excessive. I don't have 293 friends who really care about my politics, my family, or my life.
BUT, I've realized if I even have one friend, that means I have all of their friends, and their friends, and so on and so forth. Unless I can set the parameters (and seriously, who can really do that, because if you could I would suggest global domination because you are an evil genius) to only show posts to that one person, I'm setting my thoughts free and awkward ill advised tagged photos for the world. And now, now I am noticing people taking "screen shots" of what other people say (who knows, maybe I have been screen shotted multiple times and I am just not that sophisticated to know about it) and posting it for public comment. Uh-huh.
A few months ago I noticed the whole schizophrenic FB phenomenon ... one post. One post from a girl I thought had a FB name of "jane smith" was suddenly "jane anderson" (duh, fake names at my attempt to protect the innocene of apparent FB schizophrenic actions). In an attempt to keep things all orderly and all those friends situated, FB has come up with groups. Groups are a fancy way of putting people together who MIGHT care about each other's hobbies/politics/pictures of their cats. Limiting the creation of groups (because there is one for EVERYTHING) is like limiting the creation of hamsters. One cage, riddled with toilet paper rolls shredded into nests. It's happening and nobody can stop it.
Back to Jane. The Jane I knew as married "smith" was suddenly posting in a group (not even a group I was in mind you, another group a friend was in who shared a thread and so it goes on and on into eternity, amen) under jane "anderson". Jane. Jane. It's the same profile pic ... but the comments were completely different and the "Janes" obviously two different people sharing the same body. High school maiden name Jane, an apparent cool hipster now with definite opinions on things versus married PTA president Jane. It took me at least a day to wrap my head around the fact that people do not play "fair" on FB and they create alter egos to post on different groups, or threads, or whatever because they aren't satisfied with the self they have to portray (I'm just guessing here).
I feel kind of dirty. Dirty in a way that is exposed, shared, and passed around for everyone to comment. And I can't keep up. If I want to participate in life as I know it here in 2012 almost 2013 I have to FB. I have to FB to keep up with my kids schools, I have to FB to participate in my neighborhood and the current great "park your car on the street so the snow plow can get by" debate (for the love of all that is holy, please park your car in your driveway, on your yard, or in your front room for hells sake, let's just put that FB battle to rest cause I'm tired of reading people "one upping" each other posting first their opinion, then links on the local law). Tragically, I have to FB to keep up with my own friends, family and their lives... because that's where people talk these days.
I want desperately to look away. But I cannot. I can't stop reading or posting. And I suppose that's the sad part. Where did we get to a point in the world where reading and posting was a part of our sense of society and belonging? When did we blow past phone calls to texting, letters to emails? I miss that. I miss the connection of the personal touch. I'm sitting here blogging my feelings (cruel irony) because I want to think there is a girl in the world that feels like me besides my grandma. I want to hope in the universe another soul exists who thinks greeting someone with "what's your facebook name?" is weird. It's Cortney. Just Cortney. P.S. I have 293 friends.
