It was a glorious three-week fling. I joined Facebook out of curiosity to find out what the hype was about. I soon found myself with a list of 51 "friends" -- some who I found, some who found me. I was absolutely giddy, catching up on 15 or more years worth of gossip. Heck, I even had an online chat with my first boyfriend!
After a few days I was hopelessly addicted to Facebook. I couldn't wait to open up my email to see if someone had "poked" me or had written on my "wall". Instead of reading the newspaper, I was reading the mini news feeds that the people on my friends list were posting next to their profiles. I spent countless hours browsing through photo albums, linking to blogs, and marveling at how much people had changed (or hadn't changed). I bantered back and forth (or rather "wall-to-wall" in Facebook talk) about life then and now.
When I realized that some of my "friends" had hundreds of other "friends" and I only had a dozen or so, I started feeling like a big loser. It was like being in high school all over again -- just one big popularity contest. Or that's what I thought until I realized that building up a list of friends on Facebook was like rolling a snowball. It just gets bigger and bigger as you come across more contacts. One friend may lead you to three more friends, and then those friends lead you to more friends, and so on and so and so on.
I started my search for friends by checking to see if any of the people in my email address book were registered on Facebook. I turned up a good half dozen here. After that, I began looking through online yearbooks where I was able to find people from my high school and college days. Heck, I even found some people from elementary school. Those were the really cool finds. Catching up with these people made the whole Facebook experience worthwhile.
Then I dug through my friends' friends' list (anyone on Facebook will understand exactly what I mean by this) hoping they would lead me to other long lost acquaintances. Instead I found a bunch of my co-workers that I see virtually everyday. I though, "What the heck?" and added them. Whether in real life I would actually qualify some of these people as "friends" is questionable. But I wanted to see how far I could go, how many people I could actually find.
Yesterday I saw the light. Actually I heard it on CBC radio (isn't this always the way with me?). They were talking about the dark side of Facebook. It was then that I started asking myself, what on Earth am I doing? Why am I putting my personal life on display so carelessly? If my hubby is reading this, he's thinking to himself "I told you so." What he had been telling me all along was affirmed by the media.
I was watching and being watched -- and not just by my "friends." Although I can't prove it, I'm pretty sure that someone out there is getting rich by selling my information. And who knows what other unwholesome ways my personal details are being used.
So my dear friends, I'm hanging up. Please don't take it personally. My new motto is a true friend is a friend for life. And I know exactly where to find all of my true friends.
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