The Young and Old

I don't get Facebook.

I was first invited or "friended" by a man named Ben. I joined, looked around, got bored, and left. There wasn't anyone there at the time, at least not for me. It's kind of the way I feel about Google+ right now.

I have 63 friends. This number is frequently up and down. I've deleted all of my work friends twice, because work is annoying and the less reminders when I'm not there, the better. The remaining friends are people I know in real life and with whom I would be willing to associate.

I haven't friended the kids I went to grade school with or most of the kids that lived in the neighborhood in which i grew up. Very few from high school and only one family member. I find the idea of being friends with my mom on Facebook weird, although I've always had a problem sharing.

Some people have hundreds of friends, thousands, too, I'm sure. Why? Are they Pokemon?

I feel like if you're going to say someone is your friend then it should be someone with whom you are going to talk, or that you care to hear from and about. So many friends as people have either requires too much maintenance on your news feed or creates a raging river of updates too mercurial and transient to keep track of. (Also, why the hell is Facebook so complicated? I don't know what half that shit even does.)

Or maybe I'm being too critical. Maybe it is this meaningless thing, as I think of it, but that doesn't make the bonds meaningless. If the simplest bond we share with everyone is love and that's all that links us, is it not fair to also call that person a friend?

But then there's this experience I had with a friend. I didn't like a comment she made on my status so I deleted it. And it made her mad. Real life mad. I've got another friend, a coworker, who I deleted and then she displayed annoyance that I had done so. I have seen the look of lost from multiple deleted friends. A binary coldness in their eyes.

I think of deleting my account entirely. I see people in the real world who are surviving without. Or I could add everyone I know and create a representation of my entire world. But there doesn't seem to be a middle ground between the two.

I just don't get it.