The Black Hole that is Facebook

Ok, so here I am wondering if Facebook can sue me, or if they even care that some trivial little blogger in a small town in the barely populated state of Wyoming is not a fan. Not signing up to be a fan, don't want to be their friend. Is that harsh? You have to understand that I have a large family. A large and, until quite recently, blogging family. I used to save checking the family blogs for a sort of weekend reward. The truth is there were so many of them and reading all of them took so much time, the weekend was the only practical time to undertake the task. Catching up on the family blogs during the week meant excessive guilt when 2o super important things didn't get done. Things like feeding my family dinner. I enjoyed the blog reading experience so much, I started my own family blog. Then a really weird thing happened. People stopped blogging. For a while I thought it was somehow my fault. I wondered if a person could have the equivalent of blogger bad breathe. Eventually, I learned the truth. One by one, my closest relations were being sucked into Facebook. I discovered this sad truth one day when my sister called and told me I just had to look into facebook. She was having a blast, she was hooked and she wanted me to join in the fun. I had my doubts. I had already been missing her blog for weeks. No news, no pics, nothing but a sad address which never showed an update. Looking at that address was like looking at a beloved boutique, whose door was shut, whose windows were papered over and whose shelves were emptied. If facebook was responsible for this travesty, I was suspicious to say the least. My opinion was not improved when my nephew informed me he had just joined facebook in order to visist with his older sister, a college freshmen, while she was home from college. It soon became common place to stumble upon a room full of laptops in my nephews house. Four or more people, all on facebook, talking to each other. Had I been in the middle of a Dr. Who episode, I would, of course, have considered alien mind control as a real possibility. Seeing as I have never been in the middle of a Dr. Who episode I still wondered if facebook might actually possess some sort of gravitational pull, if once sucked in a person would continually be pulled back, even against his will. And ok... this non compliant, wouldn't want to be a lemming part of me just didn't want to join such an obvious bunch of joiners. It's like some kind of twisted motto I hold to, "if everyone is doing it - run the other way. " Anyway.... everyone eventually and inevitably included my husband, who was also going through family news withdrawal and isn't nearly as stubborn as I am. And, lo and behold, I discovered a new plethora of reasons to despise facebook. Entertain me while I whinge about a few.
1. My husband, now regularly sucked into facebook, while still to be found hanging out with his family, now had a laptop in front of him... glazed over eyes and only a semi-conscious awareness that anyone else existed.
2. Secretaries at work will ask to be your husbands friends.
3. See number 2
4. When, in an effort to share the joy with me, my husband had me sit down and look at facebook with him, I discovered that the family news I had so long been missing had not, in fact, been sucked into facebook. All I found of my family and friends were one liners, daily or perhaps hourly witticisms that gave me no insight whatsoever into what was going on in the lives and homes and hearts of the people I had thought I would be delighted to rediscover on facebook.
5.Standing in place of all that I had been missing were a million quizzes, games and buttons, which, again, had nothing to do with anyone I care about.
6. See number 2

My husband eventually gave up on facebook. He said he felt more like he was eavesdropping than actually conversing with anyone. I think the truth is that he loved his wife and was so concerned over the amount of frustration she was feeling, he pulled himself free of the immense gravitational pull of facebook just for her. It was a heroic sacrifice. If I hadn't already been such a big fan of the guy, I would have become one.

And so my frustration with facebook faded, though I still missed all those wonderful family blogs. And then, quite recently, I saw something in print that nearly broke my heart. My brother-in-law, in one of his wonderfully written and fun to read blogs, admitted he was looking into facebook. I was disheartened and absolutely sure I would never see another update from one of my favorite blogs. A short time later, (wonder of wonders!) a new post appeared. I did a little happy dance inside my head and fully enjoyed the update. I hope there are more. My advice to my brother-in-law is this - keep fighting, keep blogging, don't give in and definitely don't allow yourself to be sucked away into that black hole which is facebook.