Be Less Boring

I spend more time on Facebook than I should and I don't know why because it annoys the hell out of me.   I don't know how many dozens of requests to join people's "Mafia" or to join "Farmville" I've ignored but it's probably up in triple digits by now.   People are always sending me stupid things that want me to install an app that has to access my personal information.  Fuck that.  Then there are all the people I don't know who send me friend requests.   If I don't know you, I'm not adding you.  Get over it.

Many, if not most, of the people I'm "friends" with on Facebook are people I haven't seen or spoken to in 25 years and even then I wouldn't have categorized us as really being friends.  Classmates, yes, acquaintances, yes, people who hung out together on rare occasions, yes,  but friends, not so much.   But so it is.

Maybe I expect too much from Facebook.  I don't think I expect anything at all, so that's unlikely.  Maybe I still don't really get the point of it.  Yeah, we've connected with people we know (or at least knew at some point in the past), now what?

If there is anything useful about Facebook it may be that it makes stalking people real easy.  The kids today call it "creeping," as in, "My mom was creeping on all of my Facebook friends."    Call it whatever you like, Facebook makes it easy.  Everyone puts out way more info than they should and it's way more accessible than it should be, especially if you aren't smart enough to clamp down the pitiful excuses Facebook offers for security settings.

Have I ever creeped?  Yes, but I didn't find anything interesting that way.  Most of the interesting things I've found out have been accidental or incidental.   Whenever someone sends me a friend request, whether I accept it or ignore it, I always browse through their friends list to see if there is anyone there I know.   By doing this, a couple of days ago, I saw someone had linked to my very first girlfriend, whom I last saw when I was 12 or maybe 13.  We "went out" for a month before she dumped me for my best friend.  They lasted less than two weeks.  She only lived in our town for a couple of years and I'd all but forgotten her long ago until I saw her in someone's friend list.  I'm not going to send her a friend request, but it was interesting to see she's still alive and kicking.

A while back I found out something a bit disturbing by Facebook creeping, though. In the friend list of a mutual friend was a link to a girl I had a big crush on in Junior High School.  The reason this was disturbing was because she's not a girl anymore.  She's not a woman, either.  That's right, she is now a he.   That's all well and good for herhim, but it made me pause and question my taste in women a bit.  Sure, she was a little on the tomboyish side, but so are lots of girls that age.

Anyway, as a result of all this, I'm really losing interest in Facebook.  Expect to see me back here on the bloggy where I belong a lot more than I have been the past few months.