one of the most revolutionary concepts of my lifetime. the fact that the girl that moved away from your school district in third grade and you haven’t seen in 25 years can find you and get reacquainted with your life in 30 seconds is mind boggling. nevermind the fact that maybe one or two things have happened to you since third grade that might have changed your personality and you don’t really have a base for ACTUALLY knowing her. little things like… puberty? i don’t know about you, but that one changed me a little.
but it is truly an amazing website. if you look at my facebook (the only jared yerg on the interweb that i am aware of, but i am in the charlotte, nc network) you can see that i am in touch with every little detail of the lives of over 600 of my close personal friends. and sadly/thankfully i actually know all of those people in one way or another. whether we played soccer together in kindergarten or they work in the cubicle next to me (cooper killion, mike scarcella, and taran beshers), they are my facebook friends. coop actually enjoys getting my updates on his iPhone.
but i do not “go looking” for these people. yes, i might look at my “people you may know” section and if someone really grabs my attention in the “holy shit, i have not seen that fool since we did a power hour freshman year” sort of way, i don’t add people. there are people there that i know, but i let them find me if they really care to.
but what do you do about friend requests from people you barely know? jas and ruby (my brother and sister-in-law) recently joined the ranks and jas and i get to talk about all the little quirks about facebook from time to time. all the people that we find that we played with as kids and such. and usually it drifts to jas asking me, “hey, do you remember this guy? because, i have no clue. i think we may have gotten in a fight on the bus in seventh grade or something?” its weird how many people think that just because you share internet space that you should share lives. hey, i am here. you are here. we don’t necessarily have to be here together. you know, we made it the last 20 years without sending each other virtual snowball fights, i think we can manage. matter of fact, i think the last time i saw you, we were in a real snowball fight and you were the kid everyone was polishing snowballs into iceballs to throw at…
and what in the name of all that is holy is up with all that virtual add on shit? seriously? can i get virtually hammered by drinking all the virtual beers that you send me? do you really think that i want to be a part of your mob? do we have to grow virtual plants together in order to be friends? why can’t we just treat it as the kickass communication outlet that it is. maybe get reacquainted to the point where we actually might meet for a real beer? or you can just post pictures of your real garden outside of your house and i can comment on how awesome your summer squash look? or maybe you can just send me wall posts about the last time you actually whacked a guy so that i can alert the proper authorities in your network area? that shit makes me want to have someone hit me in the face… with a really heavy book.
either way, i hope that you all enjoy catching up with old friends, making new ones, or just really creeping out the ones you already have…