Did you ever have the feeling when you were a kid that the only reasons you were invited to a classmate’s birthday party were because you were sure to bring a present and you were so unpopular that you wouldn’t dare say no — no matter what you thought of the host?
Well, that’s kind of the feeling I get about Facebook. I can’t quite decide if it’s the biggest farce of our times or the greatest boon.
Daily, I get requests from people I’ve never heard of wanting to be my friend. What, I wonder, makes me look so yearning for a pal that I’d let someone who looks like Jack the Ripper become my bosom buddy. How dare he or she think I’m so hard up for companionship that I’d share my bon mots with just anyone. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why many of my “friends” change their pictures daily (some hourly) — it’s to hide that look of desperation.
Facebook is insidious. At our recent sales information session, most of us had an aha moment when our trainer said that Facebook’s busiest time begins at 9 a.m. and ends right around 4:45 p.m. If you’re a boss and the penny suddenly dropped, you now know what most of your employees are doing during work hours. But chances are you’ll never know for sure. How many of your employees ever asked to be your friend?
Actually, the word friend was never meant to define what your relationship is on Facebook. We’ve all heard the sad tales of FB gone mad. Of teenagers sending inappropriate pictures of their “friends” to others in their social circle. Too often the fact that the post can be viewed privately is confused with the fact that it only takes the press of a button to broadcast everything to a much larger audience.
And young people aren’t the only folks guilty of making mugs of themselves on a worldwide platform. I see a lot of posts from late 30-somethings heading into 40 territory who really need autocorrect for their minds, never mind spell check for their nasty and/or mundane scribblings.
I came late to the Facebook party. I’ve only been part of the happy family for a couple of years. For the most part, I’ve tried to confine my list of friends to people who actually personify the word. One or two strangers have snuck through in a weak (nobody likes me, everybody hates me) moment, but mostly the people I converse with on Facebook are people I see regularly in the community or family members I want to stay in touch with.
Come to think of it, maybe the best part of the Facebook phenomenon is the opportunity to live vicariously through all my FB friends who take fabulous trips all over the world and care enough about me to share their good fortune in pictorial form. Or maybe they’re just bragging and I’m too unwise to tell the difference. After all I am a FB rube.
Farce or boon, by the time I figure it out, it’ll be passé, and all the Rippers will have moved to some other platform.
Facebook: friend or foe, I just don’t know.
