Get Out of My Face
Friendships that had outlived their usefulness used to die gracefully. Now, they rise again on Facebook.
By Philip Gulley
Several months ago, my high-school class held its 30th-anniversary reunion. Every class has someone, usually a person who served as a class officer, who organizes such things, and in our class it is Terri McCoy. This year’s event was arranged using Facebook, one of those “social media” Web sites that everyone is talking about. This required that I join Facebook, which I did, not realizing it would eventually consume my every waking moment.
It has been my goal to simplify matters as I age. If some friends haven’t sent us a Christmas card in two years, we scratch them from our list. If a year passes and I haven’t worn an article of clothing, it goes to Goodwill. Rather than filling every day to the brim, I allow time to relax. If a long-ago friendship has fallen by the way, I do not invest time and energy trying to renew it. Some friendships are only for a season, and to invest in them beyond their value makes little sense. In the spirit of Thoreau, I want to simplify, simplify, simplify!
Growing up, I had two best friends. This was an ideal number because when one wasn’t available to play, the other was. I had a B-list of three other friends who could be called upon when circumstances warranted. I’m not naming their names because they are still my friends, and I don’t want the B-list friends getting mad by discovering they weren’t A-list friends. My life was pleasantly full with five friends—more would have been unwieldy, and I held to that number for a good many years. But then Facebook came along, and, after only a few months, I find myself with 912 friends and adding more each day. You can imagine my dismay.
Of my 912 Facebook friends, I know roughly 150 of them by sight. If the other 762 greeted me in person, I would have to smile, shake their hands, and pretend I knew them.
“Hello, friend,” I would say.
The smart-alecks would ask, “You don’t know my name, do you?” and I would have to make up a lie about having had a stroke and losing my memory.
