Facebook and Me--The Untold Story

Kids have it easy these days.  When I was younger, we had to rifle through people's garbage to find out what they were up to.  Now, there is Facebook.  There are only a few reasons why I like this social networking tool.  It allows me to interact with people without actually having to see, hear or smell them.

We post our hopes, dreams and photos on Facebook.  There are people who post photos of their baby with the umbilical cord still attached.  There is some sort of an infinite hypersonic race to get photos on their "wall" with the breakneck agility and speed of a two-time Kentucky Derby winning racehorse as quickly as it is humanly achievable without actually being a horse.

There are times, though, that I feel like Facebook is like the evil pirate of life and I want to kick his peg leg from under him.

I have learned through battered experience that there are 3 things in life you NEVER do:

Pirates make me nervous and so does Facebook.  I resisted Facebook for a very long time.  I finally worked up the nerve to make a page and after very little thought or effort I put up a profile picture that looked like my eyeballs were hanging out.  I then sat back to see what I had.

Zero friends.  Can they make that zero a bit bigger so the aliens living in the next solar system can make it out? I felt like it was laughing at me, taunting me, pushing me further and further onto the plank of rejection only to fall into an ocean of seclusion and self-doubt.  It was actually a bit depressing.  I had to fill out the profile information next. My only skills are sleeping and eating. Now, the entire world knows. And to top it off, I was supposed to come up with a status on the fly, just like that.

I didn't want a ham-fisted potpourri of words to redeem itself as my status.  My status had to completely dominate the online world.  I became consumed by anxiety and started to wonder what the big deal was with Facebook anyway.

Apparently, people either text or Facebook now.  Do people actually talk anymore?  What about countries? Does Rwanda or Zimbabwe have a Facebook page? Would the world's problems be solved simply by not speaking and merely having statuses? After all, we need to know what is going on.

Sometimes, I believe that there is a bigger picture here that we do not see. Does Mark Zuckerberg actually work for the CIA? The CIA's work has been cut by two-thirds since the onset of Facebook (OK, I am just making stuff up now).  But, think about it.  Our entire lives (interests, friends, thoughts and what we had for breakfast) are consolidated onto one platform...Facebook.    What about "Operation Farmville?"  That pacifies the unemployed and retired so they are distracted from the bigger picture of not having any money to pay their bills because of the economy.  Everything is right there on one platform for the CIA to utilize.

At times, though, I have trouble keeping up with my newfound Facebook life.  I reached the point of having three friends and they started sucking the life out of me.  They posted pictures of their happy families and get togethers and I only have a picture of my blog.

As my Facebook page had grown to the three friends and other people had blocked me permanently, I realized that people stopped calling because it was easier just to "update."  My only outside contact with the world seemed to fade away into an abyss of loneliness and despair.  At times, I tried to convince myself in an argument not to get discouraged.  Sometimes, I was on the winning end of the argument, but then...

My initial thirst for Facebook imploded on itself, leaving behind this huge dark hole inside of me full of self-doubt and insecurity.  As though a special award was created for them doing so, the evil minions inside of my stomach started to pounce and jump in the hole the implosion had created.  As a result of the confluence of the many disappointments of Facebook, I started to feel defeated.  I pathetically started to expect failure from myself.  I began to think that the minions were rabid.

And then one day I get a message and a friend request from this kid I had never met.  

As I read this, the dark hole inside of me began to fill with this gooey sense of pride and joy and the evil minions became trapped in the goo and I think they died, which is a good thing because that is what I wanted them to do.  Not live.

I quickly accepted the request, but not too quickly (play it cool, Tracie, play it cool) and updated my status.

Ok, I have one more thing to say: