Friends: The One About Facebook Edition

I joined Facebook. I resisted for a long time. I like to stay off the grid. I got too creeped out about all the tracking going on and Facebook knowing what I am doing. Sure people go even further and install Google desktop, allowing Google to assign metatags to everything on their hard drive and its ok because "Google does no evil." You won't catch me doing that anytime soon, but I signed up for Facebook.

I signed up because I keep hearing about the apps and how they are the future of games. The companies who make these things are achieving ridiculously large valuations. I also signed up because I thought it would be a good way to promote this blog. So far so good with the first one, I haven't really figured out the second. Some other stuff happened along the way though.

Facebook wants me to tell everyone I know, directly and tangentially, what I am doing right now. It is kind of like twittering, but in my head it makes me feel like my broadcast would be telling people my head is so large as to think they really care about what it is I am doing right now. Then I realize I put an awful lot of time into writing posts like this on my blog which demands a larger time commitment than a pithy phrase on Facebook, so I must have an even more inflated view of my significance than those people telling me what they are doing. I think about doing it, but then paralysis sets in as I realize the thing I type has to be very important. If I am going to broadcast to all of these people, I must say something funny. . . no, profound . . . profoundly funny. I sat and tried to think of something, but couldn't, so I didn't. The blog is much more passive anyways. Especially whey you call them something like "A Tree Falling in the Forest." My blog is not in your face - until I figure out how to do it on Facebook.

The other thing going on is the "friend thing." There is a set of people who I definitely want to connect with. There is another set of people who I would like to connect with, but I don't really know whether they want to connect with me. There is third set of people who I don't want to connect with, but may want to connect with me, but don't know I don't want them to connect with me. Finally, there is a set of people who are on the other side of the door I slam on far side of the bridge I burn at the end of some interactions.

The first ones are easy. I sent those out they sent them back to me, job done. I even found some old friends I have not seen in a while and a business acquaintance which may lead to something. The second set was a bit time consuming. I noodled around the friends lists of my friends and found people who I met once or twice, or would like to know. If I met them a couple times and could pick them out of a line-up, I hit them up to connect. Surprisingly, they all accepted. As interesting as it would be to connect to P Diddy, I did not send the invitation out. The third group is tricky. These people don't know I don't want to connect. I am working on my understanding of what it means to be a "facebook friend" to decide how to respond. In other words, I am spending way to much time on each decision. My mother always told me to pick my friends carefully, but she didn't clarify whether she included facebook friends in the definition. These are people I either don't know, or choose not to interact with for some reason unknown to them. Even in the case of those I don't want to interact with, I have not been a complete flaming asshole to them in public. I just choose passive aggressively non interaction. When these people send invitations it takes way too long for me to respond. I look at the name, I click on the profile, I think about the person, I think about why I have to think about it. I get concerned about rejecting because they may be a nice enough person, I just don't know them and who am I to reject them when they think enough of me to request a link? Then I get concerned about letting everyone into my network. This is shortly before I realize there is really no problem with letting everyone into my network. So, in almost all cases, I accept these connections. The last group is no less troubling. If they send a link request, I obviously didn't slam the door correctly. Should I slam it again? Should I send the person a detailed anecdote long with the analysis for not wanting to deal with them? Should I use the wonders of this new technology to post the story on their wall? If I push ignore, it does not feel strong enough. They don't know they were ignored. They don't know they were rejected. There is not enough satisfaction. I end up not doing anything with those.

Who knew this was going to be another job? It would be nice to end this post with a point. Unfortunately, I don't have one . . . just sharing.