Why I hate Facebook.

Has anyone noticed that Facebook is just a bone yard of old acquaintances that you never talk to in real life?  I got a FB page at the urging of an old friend, albeit an old friend I had maintained a relationship with for the most part.  Once you actually have an account you have access to so many more things than when just surfing as an outsider.  You can add friends, read their wall, see their info, comment on their status updates, play Farmville, and explore the whole psuedo social world that is FB.  Here's the thing:  I don't care.  I have a whopping total of three friends and two of those really should not count because they are relatives (well, one is my BFF of 25 years who has moved into family realm), the last is my friend who urged me to get the page.  

She has lots of "friends," as most people do.  When I first started, I took a perverse pleasure in perusing the friends lists of other people I knew.  I hadn't seen these people in, at minimum, a decade, most more than that.  It was sort of funny to see how they had changed or not.  But did I want to connect with these people?  No, not really.  A lot of them I wasn't crazy about talking to in high school, much less now.  If I wasn't your friend then, why would I want to be now?  But then I am the same person who had zero interest in attending my high school reunion, so I suppose it is to be expected.  

What I cannot fathom is the need some people have to look backwards?  Doesn't it make your neck hurt?  I know some people who really, really love connecting back to all these old friends from high school.  Their wall looks like a virtual version of my junior year English class.  But I really don't care what some fool I knew almost 20 years ago made for dinner.  And I don't really care to walk down memory lane on a computer.

I think that this phenomenon of FB tends to trick people into thinking that these people are the same as real life friends.  Uh, they're not.  I think it keeps us from reaching out to actual real life people that are sitting right in front of us.  While we frantically FB and connect with all these people we may never see, what happens to our kids, our spouse?  While we tend our virtual farm, what happens to the real life dog and the houseplants?  I suppose the whole thing is fine in moderation and something of a time killer, but for many it becomes a time sucker, in more ways than one.  We can become guilty of losing precious moments to our computer and at the same time get pulled down memory lane, reminiscing about our first love, an old flame, or the guy you crushed on but never got, and now those things are all just a mouse click away!  Hey, remember when we went to prom together?  Remember the good times in geometry?  Hey, how about remembering the good times right in front of you, how about making new memories instead of re-living the old ones with people you haven't seen in decades!

I know there are people who have friends on FB beyond the "good old days" friends.  I get that, but those friends deserve real time.  A phone call, a real life visit, not just a quick status update on the screen.  If that is all your friendship is, then maybe you aren't really friends.