On Our Way To Crazy

Ok, people. We need to talk about facebook. Because facebook? Is freaking me out.

It was all fine and good when it was all people I am close to and kids in the youth group. Then the whole world found facebook. People I knew in high school but was not friends with. People I haven’t seen or spoken to in over fifteen years. Siblings of ex-boyfriends. It’s getting insane.

I don’t mind being friends with these people, generally. I am not afraid to unfriend you if you are an annoying facebook user. But I could really do without people who do the following:

- update your status every five minutes with things like “Barney is doing the laundry” and “Barney is watching TV” and “Barney is going to bed”. We all know you do those things. Everyone does those things. It is not interesting.

- update your status every five minutes to make sure we all know how awesome you are. You got up at 4am to workout and it was SO WORTH IT! You work 24 hours a day because that’s the kind of person you are! You love to cook and play guitar because you are an independent woman! No one cares. Also, you are a tool.

- publish notes and comments all over the place stating your opinion on politics/tv/music/religion and how anyone who thinks differently about politics/tv/music/religion is clearly an idiot who has never really thought about anything ever and is obviously going to hell.

Annoying as they may be, those people are easy enough to deal with. Unfriend, ignore, unfriend, ignore, etc etc. But what do you do when someone with a little more… pull from your past shows up? Maybe someone with whom you had a serious relationship, and then never talked again? Someone with whom your last interaction was both really unpleasant and ten years ago? AWKWARD.

It’s one thing to casually be in touch with someone like that. It’s entirely another to allow them access to your entire current life without having any kind of conversation with them first. There’s no way to prepare yourself for that notification that says “SERIOUS AND DRAMATIC EX-BOYFRIEND WANTS TO BE YOUR FRIEND” with no note attached. No discussion of past events. Just an updated picture and the knowledge that they can now get in touch with everyone you know.

I don’t know. I need a bigger buffer zone, facebook. A way to ease into this kind of thing. A way to not click on their profile and see that they’ve been discussing me. Something that forces them to be the one that speaks up first. Something that forces my hand to click DENY and let my desire to live privately win out over my voyeurism.

Facebook is freaking me the heck out, y’all.