The truth about facebook and me...

I read an essay by someone who was trying to overcome her Internet habit.  Mostly she had the habit of checking the Internet when she should have been doing other more productive things such as working or making sure her kids weren’t running around with scissors.  She touched a bit on Facebook and how she was happy to have ten friends (which automatically deemed her a massive loser in her kids’ eyes.)  Her experience with Facebook is undoubtedly different from mine.

Facebook is like one of those things where no one has quite the same relationship with it than any other user.  At first I avoided Facebook because I am hard-headed to the point of social stubbornness to accept anything popular for no other reason than everyone else is doing it.  If it was popular to jump off the nearest bridge I’d sit happily atop and watch everyone else as they crashed to the ground below (that may be a horrible example because why would bridge jumping be fun.)  Anyway, I eventually became drawn in by the prospect of being able to keep easily in touch with friends who’d moved away and so I joined.  At first I frequently posted, saying hello to those I hadn’t seen since childbirth.  Perusing their photos and showing wander for the number of offspring they produced or whatever major accomplishment they considered to be most important.  But then that grew old.  I got tired of reading everyone’s business.  I didn’t need to know when some distant relationship was cutting their toenails and I especially never wanted to hear about the bowel explosions of my friend’s kid and the mess they had made.

Now I use Facebook for approximately 3 things.

1.  Sharing my smartassedness with as many people possible.  Through my inane statis updates and my comments upon others posts (should I actually feel unlazy enough to read them) I expound to the rest of the world my thoughts and feelings about one thing or another.  Most people ignore me.  That’s okay.  I’d rather be ignored than have people constantly bothering me all the time.   Also I can use this opportunity to tell people just what I’m doing because I’m absolutely sure that those people who are telling me about toenail clippings and diarrhea must want to know when I’m visiting the OBGYN or that my cat threw up on my pillow or even that I decided to try the all white food diet. where I only eat white things and then of course the next day where I declare the all white food diet to be stupid as hell.

2.  To keep up with family members I actually recognize as blood relations.  Actually that’s pretty much anyone I’m related to who’s on Facebook.  Those I’d rather ignore or distance myself from are still working on indoor plumbing and definitely would not know what Facebook was if you gave them a free tutorial.  The minute the word computer came up they’d spout off about unnecessary waste of money or how the government is controlling us through these devil machines.  Then they’d spit tobacco in their spittoon and wander off down yonder to see if them damn youngins were scarin’ up the chickens again.  I digress.  Facebook is an excellent way for me to sort through the six hundred and seventy-two pictures my sister posts of my niece each day.  Imagine if I had to receive every single one of those to my email.  Facebook saves me from this.

Last but not least.

3.  Games.  Who knew when joining Facebook that my main reasoning for continuing to log onto the website on a regular basis would be the games.  Back in the day when it was all new to me  I played four or five games at a time.  This, however, became annoying and took up way too much time.  My notification box was constantly clogged with crap other game players sent me.  Let me point out that it was at this point when my friends list tripled, simply because I needed to increase the size of my mafia, army, vampire club (whatever that’s called.) and so on.  I have since dropped it down to one definite and a second (Angry Birds) I play on occasion when the mood to hurl birds into random objects strikes.   Not only does this entertain me for about 15 minutes but it provides me the opportunity to annoy the shit out of my Facebook friends by sharing several posts asking for power boosts, opportunities to score free giveaways used in the game, help with a war, and so forth.  My sister once yelled at me about it.  I told her I’d consider cutting back but at the moment I was busy sorting through pictures of my niece watching tv, coloring, petting the cat, napping, twirling her hair, and doing other inane crap I’ve seen her do in person.  It’s easy payback for those I’ve dubbed as Facebook abusers.  These Facebook abusers post junk all the time, every day, every other hour, and on a good day at least once an hour.  The least I could do is request an energy pack or send them an invite to my mafia, farm, bakery, vampire clan or whatever else.

So in short Facebook has become a place where I can share smartass comments, disgusting tidbits about my life, sort through an onslaught of family photographs, hurl birds at blocks of wood, ice and steel, and beat the hell out of someone else’s mafia.  So to the guy who created Facebook, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity.  How else would I be able to know that a distant cousin got poison ivy on her personal girly areas and how could I tell the world that I just shaved my cats and most importantly how could I waste fifteen minutes of my time stealing from another mafia player.  Well I guess we all can’t be productive all the time.  Isn’t it nice we all have a place to get together and be virtually unproductive together.

Sianara

Kristi