I've had it for some time due to my sister, but I hardly look at it. She's on the bleeding edge of technology, and as soon as something is out, she's on it. She invited me as a weird way to bond with her older brother. Every once in a while, tired of deleting "facebook" e-mails, I check and do a "maintenance run." I don't even know why I bother.
By "I don't even know why I bother," I don't mean that facebook is so terrible, it should be hated. I mean that deep inside, even if I wish to deny it to be oh-so-cool, facebook does fascinate me. I mean, it's all about "me." In fact, I've already removed the capital and appropriated the name "facebook" as a common word much like e-mail and world wide web.
A "maintenance run" usually involves the being surprised at who found you and added you. Sometimes, with some people, you have to wonder why they remembered you and went as far as looking for you. It's strange how they are talking to me now all of a sudden, as if a long lost friend, when we hardly ever spoke then.
Even stranger is when I don't even remember them existing, much less sharing my existence with me. One girl described to perfection an event I did in high school in a class with a professor I all remember perfectly. But she might as well not have been there as the recollections of her even being there do not exist.
It's amusing when you manage to give someone a lasting impression but you can't even remember their name. Seriously, take a moment and see if you can think of people you do not even remember existing anymore. Think back and look around your main memories. It also must be terrible for them.
We're all about being recognized even for the smallest thing because in one tiny, secret way, we all wish to be recognized. And there isn't a lot of recognition going on around in this world. So we hang on the little things. Besides, every person wants to think they're memorable with the people they encounter.
So to not remember them, becomes a failure on their part. I'm saying that they go ahead and take blame on their own and not that we're actually blaming. But we all know what's going on and maybe in a deep, horrible-by-sweetness way, we love it. Makes you feel more important than you actually are.
I usually add them. Then I make up some crazy shit about how we met and leave it at that. Despite the fact that 90% of the time, this person and I will go back at never talking to each other ever again, I have yet to reject anyone. I've even gone as far as pretending to remember one particular person just so she'd leave me alone. It doesn't matter, because it's all worth it. It's like a collection. Collect as many friends as you can. I'm lame, I know. I wouldn't call less than half of these people friends, much less acquaintances.
The other rigour of maintenance is the groups you're invited to join. I've yet to reject a single invitation (and hoping for one from "I HATE YOU") mostly because I feel that rejecting someone's invite in their very own little group in which special little you has been so gloriously asked to participate in, would make the inviter feel in someway rejected. And who could be so cruel? Other than me, I mean.
My group-listing is probably huge at this point. I'm a member of dozens of groups I never intend to ever participate in because I am too lazy to learn how to do it. Keep in mind that the navigation of facebook is desperately simple, hence the glory of its success. Yet somehow I've managed to prohibit my brain from ever grasping any memory about how to go about it. I'm that lazy.
Next stop is private messages. I do not understand why people have stopped using e-mail ever since facebook but it doesn't make things better. It takes me weeks to get to a facebook message and by the time I read it, it's obsolete. Guys, there is this thing called e-mail... heads up.
After that, you end up on either the "profile" or "home" page which I'll have to click repeatedly from one to another to figure out which one of the two I am. I'm a failure to good GUI I guess. As I glance without reading any of the "events" other people have so meticulously put together, I check the wall.
Who doesn't love the wall? It's so awesome. So many people can write so many things and the more you have makes you just as cool without needing one-hundred and one friends. Other people will visit your profile and die with envy to see how many wall writings you scored. That's regardless of the fact that most people write lame shit on other people's walls.
Final stop is the "pokes." I keep them there for weeks, then poke someone back and forget about it. Some people stop poking, others are repeated offenders. Maybe they're playing the same game I'm playing. It's the equivalent of playing solitaire, to escape the monotony of data entry in a third party website. Seems like facebook has become almost a job. Where's the fun? But it must be all worth it; it's about "me," after all, isn't it?
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