First off, thank you so much for the nice comments, which reminded me that you're still out there, and that you're enjoying what I'm dishing out over here. Sometimes when no one comments, or worse, someone takes the time to leave a crappy comment like that, it makes me feel kind of like that weird kid at the school dance who is just making fun of everyone and is being funny but who actually feels totally self conscious. So, thanks again– it's good to know you're coming with me on this.
I noticed a funny phenomenon the other day, and I thought I would throw it out there to see if this happens to anyone else: you know how, social media being the great equalizer of phases of your life, you have some friends of friends who you maybe met once a long time ago and now they are your friend on Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever but you never really knew that much about them? Are you with me so far? You know them, but you don't really know them, and now you KNOW them, like what religion they are and what their kid had for breakfast and the fact that they want a new job?
OK, add on to this a layer of total weirdness because your original friend told you a story that you cannot get out of your mind about that person, and now you have my exact social media experience with about seven different people. Like, every time I see their names go by in my feed, I think a weird thing about them, and that thing is frozen in my mind forever.
Let me explain. I am "Friend Fort Knox," the person you tell things to when you have to tell someone, but you don't want these things to get out. For instance, if you once dated a guy that turned out to like wearing old women's underpants and you didn't want to ruin the guy's rep but you had to break up with him and even more important, you HAD TO TELL SOMEONE ABOUT THE UNDERPANTS, I would be the person you would tell that to. So, you would move on with your life, get married, have kids, etc, and that person would have friended me on Facebook and LinkedIn a long time ago, and I would just forget and not unfriend them because what do I care? And then one day I would get an email from LinkedIn that says "Lori, do you want to see more of X's connections?" And X will forever equal the underwear guy, and I will laugh out loud and be like "No, I do not want to know any more about that underwear guy," and I will not bother to tell you.
Is anyone else having this absurd social media experience, or is it just me? If social media is the great pool filter of all the times of your life and we are mostly all completely different people than when we met each other, there should be some kind of app to erase my memory from keeping your former flame frozen forever in my mind as “underwear guy.” As another example, here is a picture of me from high school when I had a perm and spiky bangs and a sassy attitude. I’m sure some people just remember me this way. As you can see, I loved having my picture taken just as much when I was a mere teenager.
And so, here we are. Stephan has just implemented a policy he calls “friend pruning,” whereby if he sees your name pop up in the “Birthday Reminders” on Facebook and he does not know you well enough to actually wish you a happy birthday, then he is unfriending you. Cold!
Oh, I also just found out that a semi-famous acquaintance-type social media person is best friends with the sister of my friend, who I know for a fact is a bad person (the sister, not the friend of course). What to do about that? I don't really know the acquaintance that well, so I can't really Tweet my concern, you know what I'm saying? She seems to be really close with the sister, who am I to stick my nose where it doesn't belong, just because I can see them being friends on social media?
Is anyone else having these semi-weird experiences, or am I in fact that kid at the dance making the catty comments? Discuss.
