Networking, Socially

It used to be that social networking meant talking to your co-workers in the break room, or having block parties, or even joining a group (e.g., religious, musical, political) that shared your interests. Today we are moving a lot of those functions to the internet. I am by no means opposed to online technologies. E-mail was my lifeline 15 years ago. It helped me find like-minded people during a time when I was feeling particularly isolated. Some of those people are now among my closest friends. But lately I have noticed a trend away from e-mail and toward social networking sites.

I belong to two "social networks" in the 21st-century sense -- Facebook and Ravelry. I spend more time looking at and responding to what my "friends" are posting on Facebook, but I honestly believe that Ravelry is the more useful of the two. Today I'm going to explore my ambivalence toward Facebook. I'll save my thoughts about Ravelry for some other time.

I have heard people describe Facebook as a real time waster, saying that they won't join Facebook because they don't have the time. To which I have always said "Huh?" But then I realized that, early on in my Facebook adventure, I turned off all notices about games and contests and almost every other sideline on Facebook. I never "like" a company or a movie or a business, even though I may like them very much. All I ever see is the status updates of the people I have as "friends". It takes me only a few minutes a day to look at what's new and to post any comments that occur to me. Sometimes I will post a status update of my own, but most of the time I just check on what other people are doing -- the social networker as voyeur.

My youngest son is fond of razzing me about Facebook, even though it was his contemporaries who asked me to get a Facebook account. They were in the process of college applications at the time and were concerned about reports that colleges would look at their profiles. They wanted to have an adult who was not their parent take a look and make sure that they had nothing inappropriate in their public profiles. So I did, and they didn't, and my association with Facebook probably would have ended there except that someone from my past found me there and sent me a friend request.

That first Facebook friend was someone I've stayed in touch with, off and on, over the years. We were friends in high school, although I was two years ahead of her. We roomed together one year in college. I knew her family; she knew mine. We corresponded regularly for a while after college and then drifted apart, though every now and again one of us would look up the other. We even got together a few times over the years when we ended up in the same city at the same time. So it was kind of cool to be in touch with her again. I accepted the friend request and read her status updates and occasionally posted something about my life. And that, I thought, was that.

But then other people started finding me on Facebook. They fell pretty much into four categories:

-- People I know and like, and I'll include family members in this category because I like almost all of them on any given day. Whether I know them in person or via online venues, I'm usually already in touch with these people. Facebook is just a little extra, not a primary means of communicating with this group of people.

-- People I knew at one time in my life. Some may have been friends, but many more of them were acquaintances, co-workers, friends of friends, or people I haven't given a thought to in years. One or two have been people I was really close to at some point in my life, and it's been nice to reconnect. But for the vast majority of these people, I have come to realize that there is a reason why we haven't stayed in touch with each other.

-- People I don't know or don't remember. These are mostly people from high school or college or one of my early jobs, others are friends of other friends. Whatever and whoever these people are, I don't really know them so why would I want to read about their lives, or have them read about mine?

-- People I know or have known in real life and have no desire to be friends with, online or in reality. Maybe I shouldn't admit that such a category exists, but it does.

It is these last two groups that pose the biggest problems for me. And it is these last two categories that illuminate my ambivalence toward the new social networking. I mostly ignore friend requests from these people, but it always feels a little awkward, especially as some of them are "friends" with other friends or with members of my family. My hope is that they think I'm too dumb to figure out how Facebook friending works.

My youngest son points out that "old fogies" like me who join Facebook tend to share too much, or at least write too much. He says that younger people, the ones for whom Facebook was originally designed, tend to be brief in their status updates and comments. I have to agree with him there. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to write more, just that it seems to be a generational tendency. My generation, if you will, was an e-mail generation. For us, e-mail was a natural progression from writing letters and notes. E-mail lends itself to longer messages, more introspection, more digression. And it's faster than snail mail. Facebook is the invention of the TV and video game generation, those who were brought up on short bursts of information, often accompanied by color and movement and sound.

Perhaps Facebook should have remained a college and post-graduate phenomenon. My daughter says she misses some of the features Facebook sported before it went public, when it was only for college students. Though she understands why they were removed, they were a useful tool for her when she was still in college.

And perhaps the "old fogies" should continue to find their own ways to connect with the people who truly mean something to us. You know, like pick up the phone and call someone. But more on phones another day.

What's a CFS?

My father used to lament about the preponderance -- and sometimes the lack -- of CFS, or convenient flat surfaces. Being a product of his time, he was referring to table tops, counter space, book shelves, desk tops, and even floors. In other words, his view of a CFS was always horizontal and the CFS existed primarily so that things could be piled upon it.

However, it strikes me that in the 21st century, which my father unfortunately did not live to see, that our CFSes are also vertical -- not just walls and bulletin boards and refrigerator fronts, but also our computer screens. We clutter these things up, or make them spare and utilitarian, as suits our personalities.