Why I don't do Facebook and other narcissistic musings

After I wrote this post, it occurred to me that it was rather argumentative and inflammatory. And try as I might, I am unable to edit down the tone without compromising the message I intended. So if this type of message offends you, I am very sorry. But will you please come back tomorrow?

Sunday night, my dear friend CA and I had a nice long phone conversation. Like I think we each said goodbye about eight times before we actually ended the phone call. Because that is how we roll. Because we are 500 miles apart and when we get on the phone we have to catch up on the last month of each others lives. Because we only talk about once a month. Anyway, during said phone call, she asked me if I was on Facebook. And once again, I was forced to reexamine how I feel about Facebook. Cause I just don't want to do Facebook.

Once like a bazillion years ago, someone convinced me to join Myspace, and I did and played around on it for a little while until certain things started to bother me about that form of social media. And then I tried to delete my account. And I don't know if if worked or not, but I don't use it anymore. Oh anyways, the things that bother me.

1. The majority of the time, the "friends" that you have in the social networking sites fall into one of the following categories: your real friends (which I shall call regular interaction friends for the sake of clarity), your former friends (which you don't interact with much/at all anymore but you used to at one point) and your not friends (people you have never had a relationship with other than the social networking site). I would also argue that family members could fall into any of those three categories, if you currently interact with them, if you no longer interact with them, or if you have never met/spoken to them. Interaction is a pretty wide term also for those of you that caught that term, and is broad enough to include those that you talk to or text as well as physically being present with them.

But the problem is, as friends fade from regular interaction to former interaction, you can't just kick them out of your friends list without having problems. That being said, you can't deny a friendship request without the possibility of injuring feelings. Do you see the problems here? And don't you ever think that you would change the way you filter your postings based on who you knew was reading it? You would be able to be much more open and even personal if you knew that only your regular interaction friends were reading it instead of that girl you haven't spoken to in eight years who is now the biggest gossip in town. See what I mean? Problematic! And how weird is it that personal details of your daily life are available to people who are not actually interested in interacting with you on any other level? World wide stalking is what I call that!

2. Social media steps in as a substitute for actually maintaining those friendships. Sure, you have been Facebook stalking your kindergarten friend for months and you know what she had for dinner last night, but are you really friends? You probably assume that she is reading your page as well and knows all about the difficulties you have been having lately, but she hasn't called to see how you are doing or stopped by with a plate of cookies, has she? So how do you know she really cares about you then, and that you really have a relationship with her? You don't! Rather than actually working on making the effort to maintain a friendship, you have fallen into a pseudo friendship. And as CA pointed out to me on Sunday, when you see that person in the grocery store or wherever, you pause and wonder if you should say hi to them or ignore them, but then you realize that you certainly can't ignore them because they are your friend on Facebook!

Now, before you throw a trillion reasons why Facebook/Myspace/whatever are the greatest things since sliced bread, let me tell you that I know there are benefits to them. I know that you are currently emailing the kid that sat next to you in science class in eighth grade, and it is the most awesome thing to find out what he/she is doing right now. I know that. And I know that you are able to keep up with your cousins that have moved out of state and see pictures of the new baby/dog/house/whatever. And both of those are great, and I am very happy for you.

I just don't feel it is right for me. Maybe it is my homebody/hermit personality, but I don't want to do the Facebook thing. The whole rest of the world may be on Facebook, and meanwhile I will stick to my little corner of the world wide web right here. My friends are on Facebook and my husband is on Facebook. Hell, my mom is even on Facebook. And I may be the very last hold out.

But dang it, I just don't want to. And yes, that is a very narcissistic view of the world.