So after years of resisting, I joined Facebook this fall. I confess I did it mainly because I had lost the email address of one of my dearest, lifelong friends (this person was my maid of honor and we've been friends since we were 8), and I knew she was on FB. I expected to use FB to find her and that would be that. Well lo and behold, a lot of my friends from Southwest College Town are also on FB, and using FB has become a great way to keep in touch with them. I've also found it extremely useful to communicate with several of these friends who are also completing their dissertations from afar. We've become one another's support group so to speak.
I've also some how managed to reconnect with a bunch of people from high school. I have to admit that I find this odd. I did not enjoy high school. My reasons for not enjoying high school are complex and difficult to explain; suffice to say, they go beyond the typical reasons. I was fairly popular and had lots of friends; I was never ostracized or mistreated by those who were more popular, nor did I mistreat others in return. In a nutshell, I lost a lot of friends in my senior year, people who had claimed to be among my best friends, because I did not attend church, did not consider myself a Christian, and had a close relationship with a teacher who had us read things that challenged the beliefs of many of my peers (apparently most high schoolers don't read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth or talk about the "Christian myth"). While I'm happy to reconnect with some people from high school, I find it utterly amazing that people whom I rarely spoke with in high school or the very individuals who cut me out of their lives because of the above described situation have now asked to be my FB friend. I have no idea how to respond to this. I am, I think, a very, very loyal friend, but I don't respond to betrayal of any kind well. I also really dislike hypocrisy and can hold a grudge. I truly don't understand why some of these individuals want to know what is going on in my life some 16 years after high school ended, especially when they wanted to have little or nothing to do with me while we were in high school. I just don't get it. I mostly ignore these requests, but then, for some crazy reason, I feel guilty. I honestly think these people are just trying to amass friends so they can feel popular again. So while I like FB for lots of reasons, in some ways, it reminds me of high school all over again. And I definitely don't like that.
2 comments:
I agree with you on the "oddities" of FB. I do have an account, but quickly deactivated it. Like you say, people come out of woodworks looking to be your best friend for whatever reason. After the first few token exchanges, you have to wonder, where is this relationship going? Anyhow, I am now dead-set against FB as I can easily keep in touch with my friends and loved ones via email, phone, etc. And I also do not need another reason to waste more time online.
I call Hubby a FB friend whore because he accepts friend requests from anyone and everyone, including people he explicitly doesn't like (and some of these people still work with him??). Makes no sense to me. I've adopted the "Did I even like you?"-policy. That is, if I didn't even know or like the person, or if he/she was offensive to me, then I ignore the friend request. Hubby has spoken of the guilt you mention, but I don't have any guilt at all. In my head, I'm thinking the person might take a hint and reflect a bit on why I'd ignore their request.
But really, it does seem there is a very weird politics to the whole FB friend thing...
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