Now facebook was such a simple social networking site for me to use when I first started college. I was attending the university of wyoming when I first got on it. I was also on myspace. And while myspace was allowing me to change my page with all sorts of images and ways to design i grew tired of the constant spamming to my account by nasty whorish girls. So I deleted that crap and dedicated myself solely to Facebook. That is correct i am just a Facebook man. Like I said I was addicted to Facebook my freshman year of college. When i wasnt playing halo at night to rot my brain i was on facebook looking at friends pictures and their newest status. I was hooked. I was a full fledged facebook stalker. I knew things about my friends within seconds of them happening and i used it as a way to know them with out having to actually talk to them. Yes facebook you destroyed my freshman year of college. I was put on academic probation and many of tears i cried to be able to go back and just go to bed instead of stalking til 3 in the morning and making fun of everyone on my friends list. Oh the regrets
Well now I am obviously older and of course I am much more mature. I now just use facebook to talk to my long lost friends from other places. I consider it such a great blessing to us because it has allowed me to stay in contact with my dear friends in argentina. I see their lives and I can talk to them about things that are coming up in my life. However i do not like all the applications. The constant application requests and the constant group invitations from friends that i have not heard from in 10 years send me invites to groups solely because my name is the first of the list of friends because its listed in alphabetical order. When i get these requests i just want to go and delete that friend from my list. There is nothing that i hate more than the constant requests. Oh while I am on things that have caused me to dislike facebook i will include the random friend requests. This isn't and should not be a competition for how many friends you can achieve. i mean seriously I saw a profile the other day with over a thousand friends. Is there any possible way that someone can remember the name of over a thousand "friends."
Facebook I am sad to say has destroyed the meaning of the word friend. The OED says the meaning of friend is "One joined to another in mutual benevolence and intimacy." This does not even apply to some of my friends on facebook. The urban dictionary says this about facebook friendships "Facebook friends are actually more like Facebook contacts. People will most of the time just add people they for example just saw walking in the hallway. The main reason for this is because it's almost like you go up in facebook popularity by having a lot of friends. In fact, a facebook user could have 600 friends and only 10 of them being real friends."
Our society has lost its ability to communicate one with another. We have forgotten what it is like to actually go see a friend. And while I am extremely grateful for facebook to keep in contact with people i once lived next to but now are a continent a way. I hate that it has come to the point that we use facebook to talk to our roommate who is down the hall. Or to talk to someone that lives in the same town. Social networks like facebook is erasing the need for us to get together with people. I feel that we have already started to take the step into the reality of the movie "Gamer" which shows what it's like when you live through your social networks.
Ultimately I think we need to just get up off the couch. Go out and throw a ball. Go visit your freaking grandma stop stalking your ex girlfriend from ten years ago and fantasizing about what coulda been. Go dance, go to a game play some golf. Just get out.
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