I resisted Facebook for a long time. Like a drug, I thought I could keep myself from being sucked into Facebook’s seduction, but then Hilda died and I had to get my fix… my friends fix. Had to make contact, feel the rush of contacting people. Facebook has become my passion – my browser’s new default site. I wonder who my next friend is going to be. Is Chad Kammerer, my love of my life from elementary school who didn’t know I existed, on Facebook? No? Life is so cruel.
But there are others… others I can look up to see what they’re doing right now. Burning a cd, going to the gym, writing their extraordinarily exciting memoir. The tedium of it is so… interesting. I don’t need to write long “how I’m doing” emails or even talk to people on the phone. God forbid I need to actually meet with these people and have face-to-face contact. That’s so the 20th Century. Now I get to just find out what their cat’s name is or how their kid likes to paint with watercolors. And I feel so important when I write a little What Caity Is Doing Right Now on my Facebook wall. Bunches of people are going to read my Facebook note and say to themselves, “that Caity was such a kick,” even though all I’m doing right now is drinking tea and preparing to face the cold and clean the outdoor Common House freezer.
(Someone unplugged the big freezer in the community’s Common House and everything defrosted. So now I have to deal with defrosted, rotten, vile chicken broth and other unmentionable carnivorous nastiness.)
Why aren’t any of the losers in my life on Facebook? I want to know where they are… which cliff they might be currently driving off. But they’re nowhere to be found on Facebook. Maybe I should look over at the OTHER social networking site, the other place I can stay in touch with people on. For hours. Every day.