Older Eyes and Facebook
I first joined Facebook when Muri’s friends knew things about our daughter’s family before we did. They’re reading about them on Facebook, she told me. Do you think you could get me on it? I joined to figure out how it worked then signed Muri up. It was interesting to see our daughter on her Facebook page … it often seemed like a completely different person than the one talking to us on the phone. An easier, happier person. Then, the friend requests started to show up. I’d heard about people reconnecting with old friends … I even searched my high school and college. Mostly, I got local 12-Step friends and acquaintances. Family consisted of my brother and his wife plus a few nieces. The grown children of a few old friends turned up as well as some friends of my daughter. Why in the world they wanted to Friend me I didn’t know. But I never thought of it as a competition. One young woman I coached on my daughter’s soccer team sent me a message telling me what a wonderful coach I was … along with a friend request, which I accepted. She turned out to be a prolific poster who flooded my page with stories and pictures I had no interest in seeing. Her posts are now hidden. I started refusing friends. Is that a Facebook faux pas? For one, I drew the line at children of nieces and nephews … and at grandsons. I love the little urchins but I don’t want censor what I post … or piss off aunts, uncles and daughters.
In spite of what jerk Mark Zuckerberg seemed to be in The Social Network, I really wanted to like Facebook … once I was onboard, the idea appealed to me: posting without the heavy lifting of a blog. I posted a few things I thought were interesting. No one else thought so. I commented cleverly on other people’s posts. Mostly, I was ignored and once or twice my comments were removed. Removed … and by family. And the truth is, I don’t get what other people post either. My son-in-law posted a video of a giant pimple being popped and a friend posted that he Likes Boars Head meat products. TMI and TTI**. I get to see a lot of pictures of people I don’t know and I get to see the words my friends have used in Words With Friends. EGO. VOTE Not even
good Scrabble words! I get invitations from friends to play games and use aps like Birthday Calendar, then when I try, they require access to my information and offer me even more aps. No thanks. I get philosophical, political and religious posts from friends and friends of friends. Some are pure propaganda and some I agree with (rimshot, please) but have you noticed that almost no one ever says, Hey, that’s a pile of crap? Actually, my brother’s been known to … and in my weaker moments, so have I. The latest thing I don’t get is checking-in. Do I really want to know I know when friends are at DFW Airport or the Starbucks in Pacoima? No, not really. Do I really want them to know where I am? Hell, no.
Someone suggested that I should create a page for Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog to bring more traffic to my blog. Being a geek who likes to figure things out, I created a page titled Older Eyes and added a Facebook badge to Bud’s Blog. The Facebook end works flawlessly but WordPress seemed to decide on its own when my posts were worthy of Facebook. I post them to Facebook manually now. I have exactly 15 Likes for Older Eyes, counting me … and all of us were reading Bud’s Blog anyway. Facebook keeps reminding me that Once 30 people like your Page, you’ll get access to insights about your activity. I’m still waiting. If you’re stopping by today, help me out by clicking on my Facebook Badge and Liking Older Eyes. I did acquire a few new friends on my personal page from my blogging friends and several are fairly prolific posters. My blogging friend Meleah can post Well, it’s morning and she’ll get 2.4 million comments. It’s fun to watch even if I don’t get it.
It is nice to see what my brother, Glenn and his wife GeorgeAnn are up to. GeorgeAnn is a bird lover like I am and if I post some bird pictures from my yard, she’s sure to comment. My niece, Linda, is a regular Liker of my posts, which I appreciate. And I get to see what’s going on in the lives of my Back East nephew, Bryan, and niece, Beth, on Muri’s side of the family. Bryan. The deleter of Facebook comments. I’ll forgive you some day, Bryan. But my original reason for joining is gone. My daughter, Amy, has dropped back to only a few friends … Dad not among them. Too addictive, she said, and too many issues with friends about thoughts I posted. Hmm. I have no idea how Facebook could be addictive. Doesn’t something have to be exciting or at least feel good to be addictive? I think I’m safe. Now blogging …
** Too Much Information and Too Trivial Information, of course.
Explore posts in the same categories: writing and bloggingTags: blogging, curmudgeonly rants, Facebook, friends, humor, postaday, social networking, Wordpress, writing and blogging
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
Older Eyes 
June 21, 2012 at 10:11 am
I could and probably will do a post at some point about my conflictedness concerning Facebook. Generally, I, too, wanted to like it more than I do. Most of the status updates are such trivialized crap that came straight off of AOLs homepage or Pinterest. I am not dying to know that who loves Tide with Bleach other than me.
I also, think that people do think that “400 friends” means something important. Like 400 people really care about them in some special way. It’s all about trying to drive up a number that has no real significance at all.
People like Meleah, probably are the exception as she is just FUN to follow. Like reading a daily comic. (she by her very nature comes across sweet and fun)
The one thing I DO like about Facebook … is keeping track of important events in my real friends and famlies lives. I like seeing the pics from parties in the Chicago area that I can’t make or knowing which nieces or nephews are having some type of life event that I might of missed remembering.
As for addictive..I think this is a major addiction. Some people can’t function without constantly checking or adding status updates.
June 21, 2012 at 11:05 am
Cheryl, I really enjoy having you as a reader and especially as commenter. You always have something to say about my posts, often an angle I hadn’t seen. And often we see the same thing from different angles. Anyway, thanks.
June 21, 2012 at 11:53 am
I’ll admit to a bit of a Facebook addiction, but I have found that “who your ‘friends’ are” correlates to how much you enjoy the site. I’m fortunate to have a lot of friends who are clever, witty and intelligent. That’s not to say you don’t, of course! But they let that show in their posts and comments. The people I find banal, I hide. Why even friend them? you ask,. Well, some of it is courtesy, some of it is because I didn’t expect them to be so incredibly boring, and some of it is because I can’t NOT accept my mother’s friend request. 🙂 If I post a status update (which can be every day- only once – or can be once a week, depending on my mood) I try to make it something either witty or thought-provoking. Give people something to laugh about or think about. (And I stay away from political issues on FB. If I post anything related to politics, it’s something that can be universally joked about, rather than a position or issue. That’s what my blog is for!)
June 21, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Well, I shared this one. There’s just millions thoughts in my head. I’ll try to keep them brief. I tried FB and hated it and got off. Nat was on and got her mom interested and she got on. She was friends with Jason when he committed suicide. The contact we both had with his friends was one of the very few relief valves and positives I could carry away from his death. I got back on. I used my AOL email when I did and found some amazing old friends from there. Yes I was an AOL addict when it was $2.95 an hour. I met my wife there which is why I am in Ohio now. Since coming to FB one of the couples we “knew” on AOL have become personal and valuable friends and we’ve met a few more of those friends, too. I think I might just have a little Frank in me, so if I think you’re full of crap, I’ll tell you know matter how much I like you or love you. I just wish I could talk Patti to try it a bit because I think she get’s short change because she isn’t on.
Love you,
glenn
June 21, 2012 at 2:18 pm
I would love to share ideas and items of interest on Facebook with my friends, but they are 65-70ish women who never say anything. Most of them only have Facebook to see pictures of family.–Need to acquire some friends who want to communicate.
June 21, 2012 at 6:46 pm
Amen! Amen! Amen! I do not get Facebook. I keep my account only because I want to see things like my former coworker’s adorable new baby. My friend who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer keeps everyone in the loop through Facebook. So it has some value. But I really don’t get why someone has to write a post to tell us all that it’s raining today. Or why a relative who should just “come out” already has to keep posting pro-same-sex-marriage items. And then there are the God arguments and the political arguments that just drive me nuts. I could ALMOST live without Facebook… almost.