Some Facebook Rants

I recently purged my “friend” list on Facebook. At first I thought it was great to have so many “friends” and to reconnect with people. But as my experience has progressed I have realized that these people are not my “friends”. In fact, I spent four years in high school or college in the proximity of some of these people without ever having a real conversation. My feeling is that if I didn’t make a point to “connect” with them then, why would I now? That may seem heartless and cruel, but it is a fact. I don’t dislike them or wish them ill – I just don’t want to get step up our current association level and become involved in their daily affairs. Most of the people won’t even notice – after all, they have like 300 friends’ lives to wade through and I am probably not on the top of the list. So, my “friend” list has dwindled from 200 to around 120. That is still too many. I would love to pine it down to 50, but that would cause some serious friction among acquaintances.

Maybe that is the next innovation that needs to take place on Facebook – differing categories. Instead of emasculating the definition of the word “friend”, why can’t we categorize people based on our actual relationship? If they are business related, church related, old school people, or whatever else that might solve the problem for me. I know, they have the “top 10” friends group or whatever, but anything that says “Hey, we are going to take all of your information and disseminate it as we please” usually leads me to click “ignore.”

Which leads me to my next Facebook rant – all of these groups and causes are pointless. I don’t join any causes because, listen closely, THEY DON’T DO ANYTHING!!! By definition a “cause” affects change. Signing up for something on Facebook does not make any difference to cancer, to the old vs. new Facebook layout – to anything. Your virtual support is just that – virtual and not actual. Prayer is not going to get put back in schools, abortion is not going to get outlawed, Obama is not going to get impeached just because you join a group or cause. How about writing or emailing your congress person? You might have a shot then. But I don’t think our representatives are trolling about the Facebook groups to help them determine policy.

And if you are signing up to make a statement to your friends, shouldn’t they already know where you stand? Or perhaps they are not actually your friends but merely people you sort of knew at one time. And so we have come full circle.