I've been thinking about deleting my Facebook account for years. I'm the person this Onion article is making fun of. I can't stand Facebook's corporate philosophy and their bullshit "free speech" stance on misinformation, and every time Mark Zuckerberg opens his mouth, I cringe that somehow this fool is one of the most influential people in the world. He's probably number one on my dumb-smart people list -- my list of people who have amazing mental abilities in one narrowly defined area and couldn't be less impressive intellectually outside this specific milieu. (Actually, Zuck can't be #1; I just remembered Ben Carson exists.)
However, I never actually push the delete button on Facebook, because there are parts of it that I really like and that directly benefit my life. It's an easy way to keep up with people you care about, with whom you might otherwise lose touch (and that's a lot of people!). And even for people with whom you would keep up otherwise, Facebook is a decent supplement. I get to see pictures of my nieces and nephews and other close family members and friends I otherwise wouldn't see. For somebody who lives thousands of miles from so many of his love ones, that's important.
Then, there are just practical things Facebook is good for. My Krav Maga gym has a Facebook page, and I use it all the time to keep abreast of class announcements and things of that nature. As I mentioned before, the old building exploded, and so things were really up in the air for a few months schedule-wise (they still are, but at least we have a new permanent location), and that Facebook page was a great resource for staying in the loop.
Finally, there's the nostalgia factor, and I'm a nostalgic guy. I love thinking back on people I knew and things I did in the past. And it doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I get contacted by somebody on Facebook, and I'll be like OMG! I haven't thought about this person in forever! How do they even remember me?! (Of course, I remember them, because I remember pretty much everybody. It takes some prompting now, but it's still there!) This happened to me twice in the past few months and both times it brought me a little bit of joy.
The first was with a guy who was on my rec baseball team as a teenager. I played on a team with a bunch of kids from a different school, and I felt like I never really fit in. A lot of them were city kids, whereas I was a suburb kid, so they had a bit of an edge to them, a front, that I just didn't have. There was one kid in particular who I thought really didn't like me. He never did anything explicit to make me think this; I just got a dickish vibe from him -- too cool for school. I was only on the team for a few seasons, and, like I said, I didn't go to school with my teammates, so I never really saw any of them again.
So, imagine my surprise when I got a friend request from this dude on Facebook. I accepted it (I don't hold grudges and I'm down to be friends with whomever), and I checked out his page, and he seems like a cool, down-to-earth dude now. It's got me rethinking things. I mean, maybe he really was a dick back in the day, but he's since matured and change -- or maybe, and this is the more likely scenario, I had it wrong all along. Maybe he always was a decent guy, and I just never picked up on it. Sometimes you get a bad first impression, and it becomes a self-actualizing loop. You think somebody is a dick, so you don't engage with them, and then since they don't engaged with you, you think they're a dick. There have been numerous times when people have told me that when they first met me they thought I was aloof or super serious, which couldn't be further from the truth. But, then I was thinking the same thing about them, and that ended up being equally wrong.
Another thing I try to keep in mind is that you never know what type of shit people, especially young people, are going through behind the scenes. If somebody is standoffish or cold toward you, it could be a manifestation of their own shit and actually have little to do with you.
Anyway, the other person who contacted me is this guy M I went to grade school with. We didn't really know each other that well, he was a grade below me, but we were in the "challenge program" together, and we were both out-of-district because of it, so we rode the same bus home, and it was a long bus ride. I think they only had one bus for the out-of-district kids, so it meandered all throughout the city. As a result, I ended up hanging out with everybody on the bus. It was a make-shirt nerd crew (and I was the de facto leader).
I remember M well -- he was hard to forget. He had a big Afro; he wore glasses with an elastic band on them; he was supremely intelligent (the smart kid among the smart kids)*; and he had a serious potty mouth -- even by ten-year-old boy standards. I saw his profile picture on Facebook one time -- a friend of a friend -- and I was going to send him a friend request, but then I didn't, fearing that he wouldn't have positive memories of me, if he remembered me at all. He got bullied a lot, and I have this weird recurring thought with kids I grew up with who were bullied a lot that I was one of the people doing it, and I don't remember it. It's totally irrational, as not only do I not remember being a bully, nobody's ever told me I was one. I don't know where it comes from. But, whatever the case, I didn't friend request M.
*He was a perennial contender in the school spelling bee, and I remember one year some friends and I made picks of who we thought would go the furthest, and he was my pick. He went out super early on MARTYR, and I was so annoyed because I knew nobody else in the competition knew it had an irregular ending, but he just got the unlucky draw.
This was probably a few years ago, and then earlier this week, M mentioned me in a comment about our old challenge class, and a different Facebook friend tagged me in it, and I was pretty surprised by it. So, this time I did friend request him, and he accepted it, and then he messaged me some random memories from the bus, and I returned with some of my own, and it's been a really nice little interaction. And there's no way it would have happened without something like Facebook.
Anyway, it's late, and I feel like this post has been more rambling than usual, so I'll wrap it. But I'll leave you with George Harrison's "When We Was Fab." According to M, this song came on the bus radio once, and I went on a funny rant trying to break it down and analyze what the hell it was about. (I obviously hadn't discovered the Beatles yet and probably didn't even know what "fab" meant.) I have absolutely zero recognition of this, but I do remember the song -- and it immediately transports me to that time in my life.
Until next time...
However, I never actually push the delete button on Facebook, because there are parts of it that I really like and that directly benefit my life. It's an easy way to keep up with people you care about, with whom you might otherwise lose touch (and that's a lot of people!). And even for people with whom you would keep up otherwise, Facebook is a decent supplement. I get to see pictures of my nieces and nephews and other close family members and friends I otherwise wouldn't see. For somebody who lives thousands of miles from so many of his love ones, that's important.
Then, there are just practical things Facebook is good for. My Krav Maga gym has a Facebook page, and I use it all the time to keep abreast of class announcements and things of that nature. As I mentioned before, the old building exploded, and so things were really up in the air for a few months schedule-wise (they still are, but at least we have a new permanent location), and that Facebook page was a great resource for staying in the loop.
Finally, there's the nostalgia factor, and I'm a nostalgic guy. I love thinking back on people I knew and things I did in the past. And it doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I get contacted by somebody on Facebook, and I'll be like OMG! I haven't thought about this person in forever! How do they even remember me?! (Of course, I remember them, because I remember pretty much everybody. It takes some prompting now, but it's still there!) This happened to me twice in the past few months and both times it brought me a little bit of joy.
The first was with a guy who was on my rec baseball team as a teenager. I played on a team with a bunch of kids from a different school, and I felt like I never really fit in. A lot of them were city kids, whereas I was a suburb kid, so they had a bit of an edge to them, a front, that I just didn't have. There was one kid in particular who I thought really didn't like me. He never did anything explicit to make me think this; I just got a dickish vibe from him -- too cool for school. I was only on the team for a few seasons, and, like I said, I didn't go to school with my teammates, so I never really saw any of them again.
So, imagine my surprise when I got a friend request from this dude on Facebook. I accepted it (I don't hold grudges and I'm down to be friends with whomever), and I checked out his page, and he seems like a cool, down-to-earth dude now. It's got me rethinking things. I mean, maybe he really was a dick back in the day, but he's since matured and change -- or maybe, and this is the more likely scenario, I had it wrong all along. Maybe he always was a decent guy, and I just never picked up on it. Sometimes you get a bad first impression, and it becomes a self-actualizing loop. You think somebody is a dick, so you don't engage with them, and then since they don't engaged with you, you think they're a dick. There have been numerous times when people have told me that when they first met me they thought I was aloof or super serious, which couldn't be further from the truth. But, then I was thinking the same thing about them, and that ended up being equally wrong.
Another thing I try to keep in mind is that you never know what type of shit people, especially young people, are going through behind the scenes. If somebody is standoffish or cold toward you, it could be a manifestation of their own shit and actually have little to do with you.
Anyway, the other person who contacted me is this guy M I went to grade school with. We didn't really know each other that well, he was a grade below me, but we were in the "challenge program" together, and we were both out-of-district because of it, so we rode the same bus home, and it was a long bus ride. I think they only had one bus for the out-of-district kids, so it meandered all throughout the city. As a result, I ended up hanging out with everybody on the bus. It was a make-shirt nerd crew (and I was the de facto leader).
I remember M well -- he was hard to forget. He had a big Afro; he wore glasses with an elastic band on them; he was supremely intelligent (the smart kid among the smart kids)*; and he had a serious potty mouth -- even by ten-year-old boy standards. I saw his profile picture on Facebook one time -- a friend of a friend -- and I was going to send him a friend request, but then I didn't, fearing that he wouldn't have positive memories of me, if he remembered me at all. He got bullied a lot, and I have this weird recurring thought with kids I grew up with who were bullied a lot that I was one of the people doing it, and I don't remember it. It's totally irrational, as not only do I not remember being a bully, nobody's ever told me I was one. I don't know where it comes from. But, whatever the case, I didn't friend request M.
*He was a perennial contender in the school spelling bee, and I remember one year some friends and I made picks of who we thought would go the furthest, and he was my pick. He went out super early on MARTYR, and I was so annoyed because I knew nobody else in the competition knew it had an irregular ending, but he just got the unlucky draw.
This was probably a few years ago, and then earlier this week, M mentioned me in a comment about our old challenge class, and a different Facebook friend tagged me in it, and I was pretty surprised by it. So, this time I did friend request him, and he accepted it, and then he messaged me some random memories from the bus, and I returned with some of my own, and it's been a really nice little interaction. And there's no way it would have happened without something like Facebook.
Anyway, it's late, and I feel like this post has been more rambling than usual, so I'll wrap it. But I'll leave you with George Harrison's "When We Was Fab." According to M, this song came on the bus radio once, and I went on a funny rant trying to break it down and analyze what the hell it was about. (I obviously hadn't discovered the Beatles yet and probably didn't even know what "fab" meant.) I have absolutely zero recognition of this, but I do remember the song -- and it immediately transports me to that time in my life.
Until next time...
[In the song he says "long time ago when we was fab." The Beatles broke up in 1969 and the song came out in 1987. So, his "long time ago" wouldn't even push us out of the 2000s today. Nothing fucks with my head more than time.]
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