Planet Facebook

by Tara Cohen

My friend told me she does not like Facebook, and I started hyperventilating. Ok, maybe not truly hyperventilating, more like moderately over-ventilating, but still, I was worked up. I mean, how can anyone not like Facebook? Admittedly, I spend far too much time on Facebook. I realize I’m a Facebook junkie. A Facebook addict. A Facebook fiend. It’s seriously become a problem. The quietest guy I knew in all of my grade-school days Instant Messaged me asking if I worked for Facebook because I was on so much. So now I use the “offline” setting so people can’t see how often I’m there. Like I said: it’s a problem.

I’m on Facebook so much that I made it my browser’s home page. I cannot sit down at my computer without spending at least five minutes responding to wall posts and status updates, application suggestions and group invitations, game nudges and friend requests. I live on Planet Facebook.

So when my friend “Miranda” (who all but made me swear on my iMac not to use her real name) said she just isn’t crazy about Facebook, I had this flash of deja vu and found myself thinking of my mother-in-law.

I’ve been on my mother-in-law for ages to learn to use a computer. A few years ago, she went so far as to accept a hand-me-down from my niece, but all it did was sit in the corner and make her nervous. My husband Marty thought she was afraid if she hit the wrong key she might accidentally bomb China, and honestly, I don’t think he was far off. She called me for advice, and the conversation went something like this:

MiL: Tara, I just don’t know about this thing.
Me: Mom, we’re coming down in a week, and I’ll teach you how to use it.
MiL: Well, bring a new whatchamacallit for the AOL with you because the one I have is the wrong size.
Me: What?
MiL: It’s the wrong size. It’s not going to fit the computer.
Me: What??
MiL: The thing. The whoosie. The…the disc. It’s the AOL ninety nine, and the computer is an oh-two. It’s the wrong size.
Me: Wait…what???

We visited, and, what do you know, the disc was just the right size for the drive. I set up an AOL account, shut down the computer, and started from square one: Turn on the machine. As the desktop flickered into life, my mother-in-law looked skeptically at the various icons and said, “Ok. Now, which one is for the airplane reservations?” And so we started again:

Me: Mom, plane reservations are on websites, not actually on your computer.
MiL: What?
Me: Well, we start by accessing the internet using something called a browser.
MiL: What??
Me: If the computer is your house, then the browser is your car, and you drive the browser to the internet, which is the mall. That has websites, which are like stores.
MiL: Wait…what???

In fairness, my desire to have my mother-in-law use a computer is a little selfish. I’m comfortable with computers. I grew up with them, starting with my dad’s first home IBM, a monster of a machine, complete with the ability to turn the “green screen” to “amber” with just the flip of one glowing switch! (Hey, when your folks won’t buy you an Atari, you make do.) The upshot is that, after a lifetime of computer use, my internet connection goes down for an hour and I’m having heart palpitations. My mother-in-law, on the other hand, was born during the Hoover administration, uses a corded phone, and does not, to my knowledge, own a single CD. I realize we speak two different languages, but I still just can’t get past wanting to get her online.

Anyway, it’s not like I’m suggesting she start trolling message boards as BrisketYenta29, just that she learn enough to access regular photo and info updates on her eight grandkids without my having to send so many prints that I need to buy stock in Shutterfly.com. So I explained the benefits of email, but she gave up on the entire computer. “I don’t have time to potchke around with this thing. Anyway, it’s too impersonal,” she said. “I like to hear their voices.” I’d have argued that there’s always video chat, but (aside from not wanting her head to spin around) I knew the impersonality wasn’t really her major deterrent. It was how farblondzhet (to speak her language) she felt every time she sat in front of that glowing mystery box.

Now Facebook doesn’t make my friend Miranda feel farblondzhet per se (I think you have to be at least a converted Jew to truly be farblondzhet…she might be a little farklempt, but that’s about it), it just seems like more trouble than it’s worth to her. I’m familiar with this position; my uncle feels the same way. “I’m not going to (finger-typing motion) ‘Ben…has a stomach ache and is running to the bathroom,’” he told me. “That’s just ridiculous.” I agree, that’s a little more information than is necessary … ever … (although it’s pretty damn funny if you say it in a New York accent) but I also thought it was a fairly generational take on the whole issue. So having Miranda echo the  sentiment surprised me. I asked her why she feels this way, and her answers really intrigued me. It causes her to spend too much time looking back, she said, as opposed to looking ahead or enjoying the present. It reminds her of unfinished, closure-less business from high school. It puts people she barely remembers in positions of close friends with access to information about her daily life and activities. Not wanting to be rude, she accepts nearly every friend request, but then worries about how her present life will be interpreted by people from different phases of her past.

Maybe it’s just me, but I enjoy looking back a bit. I like finding out “what ever happened to….?” It’s like an online, ongoing, 24-hour reunion. But it’s not just high school friends, it’s people from every period of my life. True, it’s a lot of information. In a single Facebook page, I am inundated: “Joe…is sick of empanadas,” and “Amy…needs a plumber ASAP!!!” With two clicks, I find out that the weird, glue-eating kid who thought it was funny to sneeze on my Holly Hobby Trapper Keeper in 2nd grade is now a chiropractor whose five kids have names like BryKyn and Calendula. Do I really need to know all of this? Obviously not. I also don’t need (or want) to know what “Brangelina’s” kids’ four nannies do to keep in shape, but that info’s about two clicks away too. And at least I’ve actually met the people I’m following on Facebook.

So, admittedly, I have plenty of Facebook friends who aren’t actually my friends. They’re acquaintances and former colleagues. They’re family (I admit, I am not friends with everyone in my family. Sue me.) and people I make small talk with for five minutes at Target while I try to remember their names and how it is that I know them. And, due to an abominably abysmal memory, they are also, occasionally, people I don’t remember at all but whose friend requests I accept because apparently 20 of my elementary-through-high-school buddies have better recall than I and do remember these miscellaneous strangers from our collective past.

Facebook means my yearbooks are often strewn about the floor of my office like so much term-paper reference material. Smiling little buck-toothed, scraped-kneed 7-year-olds in rainbow velour and knee socks are frozen in time for my memory-provoking perusal. And thank goodness for that. Once I see that little face, some rusty wheel grinds into action deep in my pre-frontal cerebral cortex (Yes, I’m B.S.ing here. I sucked at science.) and some modicum of recognition sparks to life. Of course, then I have to scan the picture and share it on Facebook. But even once I actually do recall having known this former tether-ball partner, I sometimes think, “Now what?” Is the kid who chased me around the playground trying to flip up my skirt to see my Strawberry Shortcake panties in 3rd grade now suddenly my “friend”? Was he ever? Mmmaybe. But I don’t really need to know that “John…can’t figure out how to change the damn ringtone on my new Blackberry,” on a daily basis, do I? The fact is, I don’t know John from grade school anymore. I didn’t truly know him then. So why is it that I’m browsing through his photos at 2 a.m. wondering when he started to lose his hair? I guess because, as I learn more about these grown-up versions of my under-four-foot-tall playground pals, I find that some of them want to be friends now and almost all of them are interesting in their own rights.

Truly, despite the compulsively voyeuristic, squinting-at-the-screen-past-midnight-when-I-should-be-sleeping-since-my-kids-get-up-before-the-earliest-of-roosters trolling of relative strangers’ photos, I really enjoy Facebook. It’s my little haven at home. I relax while playing Sudoku with a guy from high school and while consistently losing Scrabble games to a mommy pal. I read little snippets and find out that I have so much in common with people from my past that I’m actually becoming online penpals (Or is that “keyboard pals” now?) of sorts with people like Alex who was a year ahead of me all through grade school. We weren’t friends then, but we knew of one another, and it’s fascinating how much we have in common now.

Facebook has enabled me to reconnect with other people I hadn’t spoken to in years, like my girlfriend Rachel. We walked off the bus together on my first day of Kindergarten, so it was pretty cool to find out that now she actually teaches Kindergarten. Then there’s Ian, my friend from summer camp who once played reveille on the camp PA system at 3 a.m. pretty much just to amuse me (which it did). And there’s Cara, a middle school friend with whom I talked through all of “Scrooged” in the theater, laughing ourselves silly during the credits when Bill Murray encouraged the audience to sing and, seemingly pointing right at us, said, “What about you? The ones who’ve been talkin’ through the whole movie?” Cara and I originally met at a Bar Mitzvah in 7th grade, and a few months ago we reconnected through that Bar Mitzvah boy’s Facebook page. And now I find that that Cara and I could not be more alike in our political views and that, like me, she’s still outspoken. I find that Ian still makes me laugh, his smirk has not changed one iota, and his son is one of the most beautiful children I’ve ever seen. I find that Rachel and I have taken extremely parallel paths in life with similar struggles. I find that these people are still my friends. I find that sharing our recollections brings up happy memories, and I’m grateful.

I also use Facebook to keep up with people I’ve known just as long as Rachel and Ian and Cara but with whom I haven’t lost contact. These are friends like Megan, who was the best sleepover buddy ever, and with whom I ordered many a pizza and made many a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough but never a single cookie. Megan is one of my dearest friends and stood up beside me on my wedding day despite the fact that, until Facebook, our friendship subsisted for most of the last decade on thrice-yearly phone calls and quarterly email updates with periodic flurries of increased contact. But now I see her little status updates regularly and I get these mini-glimpses into her daily life and she into mine. I feel closer to her as a result, and I’m more in tune with her life.

And, of course, many of my current daily life contacts are on Facebook too. They’re my mommy pals, neighbors, relatives, and acquaintances. They’re the people who are actually involved enough in my life that when I write “Tara…needs a good contractor,” they stop and email me recommendations and warnings. I love the instant gratification of logging on and finding out, all in one page, that my cousin Leah has posted an awesome new recipe on her blog, that my friend Laura’s daughter took a step, and that my nephew lost a tooth. The flip side is that a significant portion of my Facebook friends (particularly those with whom I actually interact on a regular basis) tend to assume that I read (and remember) everything they post; have seen their videos, photos, and quizzes; follow their public conversations; and am therefore aware of nearly everything happening in their lives. I’m guilty of this too. Ninety percent of the people who read my blog link to it from Facebook, yet I forget that  no where near 90% of my Facebook friends actually read my blog (or anything else I post for that matter).

And herein lies the great trap of Planet Facebook: information overload. It is the plight of  what I call “Generation USB”: those Gen-Xers-on-down, the ever-plugged-in, constantly-overconnected, paperless-wireless-high-resolution, wi-fi-and-double-tall-half-caf-venti-latte-seeking products of the digital age. Where older generations find the computer impersonal and overwhelming, those of us born in the 1970s and later, we grown children with our iPhones and iPods strapped on like so many $400 pacifiers, we have actually come full circle. No longer is computer interaction impersonal and anonymous by default (unless we want it to be, and that’s a separate blog post). My mother-in-law is right, though. True one-on-one personal contact is still essential for a meaningful relationship. Where she’s mistaken is in thinking this can’t possibly take place through the computer.

Granted, Gen USB has this unrealistic expectation that we can keep up with everything happening with everyone at every moment. Knowing the goings-on of over 200 people means that our relationships are superficial at best. The fact is, Facebook creates an illusion of “knowing” people when really, we’re just catching little subway-window-flash glimpses into their lives. But Facebook also allows us to reach out and specifically interact. And I do just that. In fact, some days, the only adult interaction I have all day — besides a 30-second weather-based conversation with a retiree bagger at the grocery store and an excruciating two minutes with the wanna-be-Britney-Spears-19-year-old-part-time-receptionist answering the phone at my doctor’s office — is what I get on Facebook. I know to some, it seems like little more than virtual note passing. But to me, it’s a window to my whole little ever-expanding world: my Planet Facebook.