Screening Facebook Status Updates and Stuff

My addiction to Facebook continues. The inner me requires that I read each and every status post of every one of my 250+ friends. It's beyond exhausting.

Some of you thanked me for tips about hiding applications like Farmville, Yoville and Mafia Wars in an earlier posts. Eliminating all the extraneous crap still leaves an overwhelming volume of posts to read. More drastic measures were needed.

For the most part, I'm interested. I enjoy seeing pictures of my friends' parents, kids, grandkids and pets even if we're unlikely to ever meet. I enjoy reading status updates and look forward to the next post for most of my Facebook friends.

Most, but not all. Repeatedly post comments, links, and/or pictures that offend or annoy me and sooner or later I'm going to click "hide". Here are a few of the reasons I hide friends on Facebook:

* Your profile picture is a bird. I'm not talking the feathery kind, either. While the obscene gesture may be fine for your friends, it's not appropriate for mine. Click.

* You posted a crude link, comment or photo. I'm all about some naughty. But nasty is inappropriate. Click.

* You post the results of quizzes about your sex life or sex organs. I don't care and suspect your friends don't either. I'd also guess you haven't had sex in ages. Still waters run deep. Click.

* You try to advance your absurd political agenda. I'm all for freedom of speech. I've even had some great debates with FB friends with views different from my own. But start talking about missing birth certificates or the intellectual attributes of Sarah Palin and I'm done. Click.

* You think I rely on you for information about something other than you, your family and your local sports teams. I don't. Click.

* You won't shut up about your faith. Yeah I know...you're shouting from the rooftops. I'm more impressed with a quiet faith. All that noise gets on my nerves. Click.

No doubt, some of my friends have hidden my posts, too. I'd guess it's because there are too many of them and/or they're tired of hearing about our silly little dogs. Oh well. You can't please everyone. Trying is what keeps me...

The Crotchety Old Man

Just a Bunch of Chicken Hawks

Keeping up with the present leaves precious little time for the past. Staying in touch with former coworkers, classmates, friends and neighbors is one of those intentions that too often falls by the wayside. Out of sight, out of mind. The intention to write, call or e-mail remains as days turn into weeks and weeks turn into years.

Enter Facebook (and other social networking sites). I've written about how great it is to connect with so many friends from so many different periods in my life and how difficult it can be to keep up with the day-to-day activities of 200+ friends. Why do I do it? Because the social scientist in me is fascinated!

It's interesting to see what people want to share and what they believe others want to know. On a personal level the status updates, comments, photos, and shared links can be quite revealing. Some of the quiz results I've seen should not be shared with anyone. I really don't care which sexual position or body part best describes you. I don't think anyone else wants to know either but that would just be a guess.

You can also learn a lot about social trends. I'm astounded by the number of men my age (over 50) with very small children or children on the way. Most, but not all, are first time parents. I haven't seen anything about this in the literature and wonder if this trend in my "sample" extends to the general population. Probably.

I'm saddened by the number of divorced women my age. I only hear one side of the story, but it seems most have been replaced by women half their age. I'd throw more stones here but my own partner is 20+ years younger than me. I know every case is unique but taken together, the male gender comes off looking like a bunch of chicken hawks.

Sigh

The Crotchety Old Man

Facebook--Taking Me Way Back

I was ecstatic the first time I wrote about Facebook and reconnecting with so many friends from the past. A month later I wrote that the thrill was gone. Now, some three months after joining the world of social networking, I have to say that I am thoroughly hooked! Facebook (and social networking in general) has to be one of the greatest innovations of our time.

I have more than 200 Facebook friends with new ones coming on board all the time. Nearly half--91 as of this moment--are friends from elementary, junior high, and/or high school. The next biggest group (at 56 now) includes coworkers from around the state. About 20 of my FB friends are colleagues that work in other states. Of the rest, ten are connected to a board I'm on, seven are kinfolk, about a half-dozen are former students and five were in my Boy Scout troop. Another dozen or so defy categorization.

The more friends you have, the longer it takes to read through all the posts that have gone up since the last time you looked. I had to pare down. I "unfriended" anyone that I don't really know and blocked several that either post too much or post crap I don't want to read. I also block all the quizzes and applications so that all that's left are posts from people I know. Still, it takes a lot of time to keep up with the day-to-day activities of some 200 friends.

I have a deep, abiding affection for all of my classmates from that era. I knew everyone in my grade in 3rd through 6th grades. We hooked up with kids from two additional elementary schools for what was then known as junior high (7th through 9th grades). I at least knew who everyone was by the end of 9th grade. Senior high mixed in kids from three other junior highs. I knew most of them by the time graduation rolled around.

It's interesting to see how much people change from the tweens and teens to the fifties. Among my classmates are a rocket scientist, a well-known political cartoonist, numerous doctors, lawyers and and professors at universities all over the United States, including Harvard. The closest thing we had to an anarchist (ok--maybe an exaggeration but you know how extreme everything was in high school) entered the military, became an MP and then a safety inspector for OSHA. I could go on. What and who people were in high school isn't much of a predictor of what they'll be doing more than 30 years later.

My affection today extends beyond those that were in my circle of friends more than 35 years ago. I've met several of my former classmates for the first time recently via Facebook. Maybe our paths never crossed, or maybe we ran in circles that would never intersect or overlap (again, remember how black and white the world was then). We've always had mutual friends but never really had the opportunity to get to know each other personally. In almost every case, I find myself wishing we had been friends way back when.

No matter what I may think about my youth and upbringing today, I had no awareness at the time that my world was any different from anyone else. That was probably true for all of us. No matter the circumstances, if that's all you have ever seen it looks normal to you. I was blissfully happy then mostly because I was too dumb to know any better. Reconnecting with friends and acquaintances from that time makes me feel good, probably because it plugs directly into those feelings from the past.

In truth, I have very little to bitch about. I've known for a long time how important my huge, extended family was and is to me. But it's only through Facebook and reconnecting with so many, many people from so long ago that I have come to appreciate how blessed I am to have had so many friends in my life. I mean it.

The Crotchety Old Man

My Friend Ella

We met sometime after sixth grade. I had to check because it feels like we have known each other forever. We went to different grade schools so it must have been sometime in junior high or later that we became friends.

My memories of junior high are few, but I'm pretty sure we both had Mrs. Lewis for Algebra in 8th grade. Your rules are your tools, and your tools are your rules. Read it with a pencil in your hand. I'm talking to you, not everybody BUT you. Learn the King's English! We definitely had Mrs. Feltner for calculus which I never would have survived without Ella (and Ro).

We had other classes together because we were both AP, college-bound students. I don't recall exactly but I'm pretty sure we sat together when it was an option. The bottom line is that we were together a couple of hours a day, five days a week for six years. And not just any six years either. We're talking the formative years from 12 to 18.

We had a blast our senior year. We both had big parts in Oklahoma--our high school musical. Ella got the part of Aunt Eller--one of the major roles of the show. I didn't have a big role so much as a lot of little parts. I was in all the dance numbers and was Judd in the dream ballet. Ella did a great job as Aunt Eller and stole the show on more than a few occasions. The dancing was fun, but Mrs. Hodges told me to keep quiet and lip sync while everyone else sang.

We spent hours and hours and hours together at rehearsals. Later that year we were inducted into the Thespian Society. We had to perform something, and Ella somehow talked me into wearing a rabbit suit for a sketch about the the baby, the antiseptic bunny and the prophylactic pup. It all sounds so very gay to me now. Hard to believe I didn't have a clue for several more years.

Fast forward to the five year class reunion. Aunt Eller had up and married Curley, becoming in essence the first cougar in a class that contains many women that are still beautiful and in more than a few cases, even more beautiful than they were 40 years ago. We have a class reunion every five years. I haven't missed one (though there is one that I don't remember very well--but that's another story). Ella has not been back since the first one.

In 30 years we have exchanged maybe five e-mails, no phone calls, zero letters, and not one single greeting card. She'll correct me if I'm wrong--that's just one reason why I love her so much--but I'm thinking five on the e-mails is generous. You get the idea...we drifted apart.

Anyway, thanks to the magic that is Facebook, we have reconnected. We talk with each other a couple of times a week now. We're up-to-speed on the major developments in our lives over the last few decades and have been giving each other advice about situations we face today. It's just like old times, only better.

Ella, I love you dearly and am so very happy to have you in my life again. Tell B not to worry ( like he's worried--ha!). You are but one more reason why I have no business remaining...

The Crotchety Old Man

The Thrill is Gone

Today marks my one-month anniversary on Facebook. Connecting with people from different periods of my life has been very cool. I'm glad to be part of the social networking phenomena, but I have to say that for me, the thrill is gone.

At first, Facebook is overwhelming. There is new lingo to learn, different ways of communicating with friends and rules about playing well with others. There are also countless ways to piss away tons and tons and tons of time. It can be all consuming.

I ignored the role-playing games from the start. I'm sure they are fun--I just don't need anything else that eats up that kind of time. Besides, I know how I can be...

After the first few days I started ignoring all the silly little quizzes, too. Having to "allow access" to my info and pics for unknown purposes increasingly made me uncomfortable. Most of the quizzes aren't very well done anyway. The questions don't make any sense, or only include choices that you'd never pick, ever. Too often the relationship between your answers and the Startrek/Sesame Street/Peanuts cartoon character you would be makes no sense.

And the results dominate Facebook "action". All you need are three or four Facebook friends that take every quiz they see and publish the results. Soon that's all you ever see. You can block the quizzes (or the friends) individually. But blocking friends isn't cool, and blocking quizzes becomes a never-ending task because there are so many of them.

That leaves you with your Facebook friends, and the search for old friends to become your new Facebook friends. I'm up to about 130 friends now. I've raised the bar a bit--I have to know who you are and have some kind of history with you in order to confirm you as a friend. I've stopped actively looking for friends because I've searched for every name I can think of, and have pretty thoroughly investigated the friends and friends of friends in my profile.

I've had at least a brief communication with most of my Facebook friends. In many instances this has been an e-mail exchange over several days. Some have just been comments on each others' walls or photos. The best involve a combination of comments, e-mail messages, and private chats that feel almost as real as face-to-face visits. But mostly it's one brief exchange and then back to the silence that defined the relationship before the connection on Facebook.

In the end, that's the way it works. You end up with the relationship you had before. I suppose there are cases where new links are established. No doubt there are also cases when the old connection no longer exists. But mostly, you just pick up where you left off before, no matter how long ago it may have been.

For Candy

An old pal of mine that I've hooked up with on Facebook asked me to write something that would make her laugh on my blog today. I'm not very good at on-demand writing. I've been trying to think of something funny I could write about all afternoon without success.

Rather than let her think I'm just lazy and was pulling her leg, I thought I'd write about her. We've been almost friends for years and years and years. The truth is that we've never really been friends. In fact, I barely know her!

We did go to school together for a really long time, but we weren't friends then. Nope. We got thrown together once or twice a year several years after graduation when a mutual friend of ours blew through town.

Despite the realities of our past, I really like Candy. Candy is and always has been upbeat, positive, and fun to be around. She laughs all the time and seems to really enjoy life. I'm very glad to have reconnected with her again.

I doubt this post made her laugh, but I'm hoping she enjoyed it. After all, not everyone gets their very own posting from...

The Crotchety Old Man