It's so hard to goodbye... to facebook

I'm not one of those individuals that is so fed up with the black hole social networking habit that I will close my account. I'm no quitter. The tendency to stay on facebook and continue clicking on that one photo that looks interesting, only to be stuck stalking that individual I said hi to once for an hour is only motivation for me to up my self control. I will beat this.

That said, I just got off facebook. I don't even know why I got on. I wonder if Mark Zuckerburg had any idea the drug he was creating. Things I wish I would have thought of...

It is good, though. I don't spend time on the phone, so it's really nice to know details about my friends. For example, I went to Mustache Bash, a local clothing store's 2nd annual fundraising event for a counseling group and had a passing thought I may run into an old friend there, only to remember I saw on facebook that he was out of town. Then, I realized to know something of an intimate detail like that about a friend's life is really nice. I feel closer, even though I guiltily have not made the time for old fashioned catching up.

Plus, there's a bit of 15 minutes of fame that can be afforded through the facebook. My status updates, since the advent of my son beginning to talk and having the ability to express his own ideas, have been unofficially devoted to our conversations which usually end in some sort of Liam-spawned punch line. The last one went a little something like this:

Liam: Mommy? Can I dribe (not a typo) your car? When I sixteen?

Me: Ha, yeah. When you're sixteen.

Liam: How about when I'm two... or when I free (three)... or when I... what am I talking about?!

On average, I get 15 likes and a good deal of comments. It's a nice feeling to be noticed.

Of course, facebook takes all the work out of maintaining relationships. You get this niggling feeling to call all these people or invite them back into your life, but that's quickly replaced by facebook stalking them. Status updates revert us all back to adolescence - you can tell who is just being themselves versus who is trying just a little too hard to get liked.

I just wonder if we need to remove ourselves from the convenience and start speaking face to face (in a non-skype fashion) or if that's just a resistance to the evolution of relationships. A new way of relating to one another that involves mono-syllabic texts in place of phone calls, evites to birthday dinners instead of penned store-bought invitations and 'liking' a status to let someone know you still think of them rather than just sending them a Hallmark.

Oh, well. I suppose it just makes all the former avenues of communication a bit more special.