I joined Facebook about six months ago because my university uses it to announce events and I was curious about what other potential uses it could be put to. So, basically my attitude towards Facebook was: it’s a teaching/event planning tool. I certainly wasn’t thinking about as a personal networking app.
However, almost as soon as I set up my account, I started getting found by my students, colleagues, fellow academics and, most surprisingly, friends from graduate school, college, and high school. I use the word “friends” here in the broad sense that Facebook does — often random people that I may have known only slightly but who are enthused to count me as another “friend.”
To say the least I am not part of the target Facebook demographic — but my unscientific observation is that my generation has discovered Facebook in droves recently and is taking it over. All I know is that an inordinate number of people from my college years have been signing onto Facebook and getting in touch with each other. I’ve received numerous messages from old “friends” telling me all about their spouses/children/jobs.***
The problem is that I had a pretty terrible college experience where I fell in with a bad crowd — a really destructive environment that traumatized me greatly. It is no exaggeration to say that I ran away to graduate school to get away from these people (and threw myself into literary studies as a kind of salvation). Other than a handful of friends I kept from those years, I made a pointed decision to cut off all contact with this crowd and haven’t seen, spoken to, or thought about them in years.
Now, suddenly, I can’t seem to escape from them. I Facebook “friended” one of my old college friends only to discover that she was “friends” with a whole host of people I wanted to avoid. Now they’re all asking to be my friends and — silly as it may seem — I am fraught about it. Just seeing their names and faces (in their profile pics) has caused me to revisit all the dark years of my past — to remember poor choices, regret my foolishness, and resent the people who played a part in encouraging my unhappiness. I’ve had some very grim “remembrance of things past,” all thanks to the wonderous power of Facebook.
*** The funny thing about Facebook is that it seems to faciliate only the initial re-connection message — the “Hey! How’s it going? Are you married? What do you do? I’m happily married to Spouse, we’ve got X great kids, I’m a Whatever Profession. It’s so great to see you again!” — and that’s the extent of the interaction. Because, really, that’s all that Facebook is designed for.
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June 24, 2008 at 9:49 am
servetus
I actually think that is part of its attraction for “our” generation–those scores of people who you actually don’t want to be in very close contact with or might read about in your college alumni notes–now everyone can keep loose track of everyone else without any effort, so you haven’t really lost anything but you also aren’t forced into the intimacy that actual effort would imply, either.
I only friend undergraduates after they graduate, but it is nice to see what they are doing–I can’t imagine most of these people would ever keep in touch with me otherwise.
June 24, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Notorious Ph.D.
I can kind of relate to this: I was Big Trouble as an undergraduate, and did a lot of things that make me cringe now. I’m in contact with the small handful of people I want to be in contact with, but would just as soon the rest of them forget that *that* Notorious ever existed.
Then again, here’s something to consider: perhaps those people you want to avoid have made some serious changes in their lives as well? I guess the problem with taking a chance like this is that you need to leave the door open a while to figure it out, and once the toxic types have entered, they rarely want to leave.
June 24, 2008 at 6:42 pm
kfluff
OMG—me f’ing TOO! I love that function wherein they ask you if you want to friend the friends of your friends (yowza, that’s a clause for you). My reaction, 9 times out of 10, is “oh, jesus. that dude hates me with the white hot heat of a thousand blazing suns. please don’t say that my pic shows up in his suggested friends list.”
If it makes you feel any better, Danah Boyd has written convincingly on the very different definitions of “friend” that are constructed via social networking sites. (It doesn’t make me feel better, but I’m holding out hope for you…)