Stevie Smith, the British poet, took some poems to her publisher back in the 1930s. They were good, he told her, but it would be much easier to publish (and sell) a novel. She took a pad of yellow legal paper and wrote, in a few weeks, a novel, which was published under the title “Novel on Yellow Paper,” and which sold moderately well, and which is actually pretty good.
What did she write about? Well, she mostly wrote about herself, and her friends. She was not very kind to her friends in the book (nor to herself, for that matter), but she needed material in a hurry, so she used what she had.
This is how she opens her novel:
Beginning this book . . . I should like then to say: Good-bye to all my friends, my beautiful and lovely friends.
I have been using Facebook for about a year and a half. I joined several years ago, but, as many people do, I did nothing with the membership; I joined mostly because someone (I think a fellow-student in a nighttime language class) asked me to be his “friend.”
Everybody and everything is on Facebook now. And, with the advent of the movie “The Social Network,” everyone's talking about it, looking at their Facebook experience with new eyes.
Looking back at my own experience, I think I can use some of the insights of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and divide my Facebook experience into five phases:
- Mild curiosity;
-
Sudden enlightenment;
-
Total obsession;
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Sudden disillusionment;
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Mild resignation.
I have, in my unscientific way, spoken to friends and relations about their Facebook experiences, and they seem to mirror mine.
This is my story:
I joined, as I said, because someone asked me to, and because I was mildly curious. And nothing happened. Every time I encounter some new Internet phenomenon, I expect my computer to get up and begin to walk and talk and fly around the room and organize my life. It hasn't happened yet, but I keep expecting it to happen.
So my Facebook membership languished for a while. I “made” a few “friends” – mostly colleagues and family members – but none of us did anything special with the website.
Then, one morning, I noticed that Partner's sister had posted that there'd been an earthquake in California.
This was news to us. And it was exciting. We'd used Facebook to make contact!
All of a sudden we were friending old school acquaintances, co-workers, family members, all over the place. It was fun. I kept peeking at my status during the day, disappointed if nothing new had happened in the last five or ten minutes.
Fun for a while, anyway. Then I started getting a lot of spam. A lot of spam. Odd postings started cropping up - things that I was pretty sure I hadn't asked for, and hadn't initiated. I'd been responding to everything – questionnaires, trivia quizzes – and everytime the “SHARE FACEBOOK INFORMATION WITH APPLICATION?” button came up, I hit “yes.” Why not?
So I stopped answering the questionnaires. The stupid ones, anyway.
And then I realized that some of my friends weren't really . . . well, my friends.
It was mostly the high-school people. One of them had a profile picture in which he was posing with a former U.S. President from Midland, Texas. It gave me the creepy sweats even to look at it. A couple of the others were in the habit of praising the Lord for just about everything, which is fine, except it seemed odd to put it in a Facebook status window. Some were posting ugly intolerant political stuff, complete with big swirly multicolored American eagles, and concluding with: CLICK HERE IF YOU AGREE! SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!
Babe, I found myself muttering through clenched teeth, I can support our troops just fine without clicking on your stupid bigoted link.
And then I made my breakthrough. What in the world was I putting myself through this for?
I unfriended in a frenzy. It was like weeding an old overgrown garden. I knew who I wanted to keep: my real friends. What in the world did I think I was going to discover in this crop of people I hadn't spoken to in over thirty-five years?
I ended up with maybe two dozen friends. This makes me the Facebook version of a hermit, I know.
I'll say this, though: I've been lucky enough to find, and be found by, a few people from my remote past who are treasures. One, retired now, travels with her husband, and posts pictures of her garden, and generally emanates happiness. Another, in North Africa, sends me cheery photos of himself and his wife and daughters bathing in the Mediterranean. One, from high school, is doing some acting, and posts pictures of himself in costume and makeup. They are wonderful people, and I'm glad Facebook has given us the opportunity to become reacquainted.
The rest of them can take their bigotry and stick it up their modems.
I know I'm not alone in this. Most of my friends have gone through the same emotional arc; most of them realize, as I did, that they really didn't need this conglomeration of “friends.” Some of them (more than a few, actually) quit Facebook in a rage when they found they'd gotten caught up in it; they felt they'd been violated, shown too much of themselves. Some just let their Facebook accounts lapse.
I still peek in at least once a day. I like seeing what's going on. I have a couple of news feeds, and one or two of my friends actually post something interesting once in a while. Pee-wee Herman posts something at least once a day. So does Chelsea Handler.
And sometimes I think about those other people, the childhood acquaintances whom I friended and then unfriended. It was like picking up my old yearbook and paging through it; I think I had a pang of nostalgia, and it felt as if I were going back in time, revisiting my high-school years.
And then I remembered that I really didn't enjoy my high-school years all that much.
So let me say with Stevie Smith: Goodbye to all my friends, my beautiful and lovely friends.
Oh, and let me just mention that I'm reposting this blog to all of my Facebook friends.
Thank you, and good day.
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