"Timmy Threatened on Facebook..."

So, apparently, there's this thing on the interweb called facebook where people go to further the relationships they establish at work and school.

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My brain just has some trouble understanding this concept. You want to further the relationships you've established at work and school, increasing the time you spend with these people? I mean, how fucking lonely and starved for attention do you have to be to email and text message the shit out of people you already see most of the week?

If it hasn't already occured to you, I have recently joined Facebook. Yes, it is true. The disease is spreading. In all honesty, it wasn't my idea...entirely. A great number of my so-called "friends" who have moved away keep contact through sending messages and photos via Facebook. The software itself is set up to connect people through mutual friends, school classes and organizations. I basically see it as an alumnist tool, enabling people to stay in contact after graduating high school and/or college. It's also really good for stalking people after they think they've escaped your attention... My own delightful creepiness aside, the most criticism of Facebook comes from incidents where petulant high schoolers continue their school politics in another forum. I don't think Facebook is much to blame for that, they've just made the easiest place for this to happen.

Anyways, my "friends" were on Facebook, and recommended I join. I wisely declined, citing my desire to remain as withdrawn as possible from the current vortex of "Me, Me, Me" software currently booming (such as IMing, texting, MySpace-easy web design). Granted, it all facilitates easier communication, but that's a double-edged sword. Just because people have the ability to speak, does not mean they will speak well. But I'm getting off track. I was free from Facebook. I never IMed or texted. I only visited MySpace for the softcore porn (incidentally, yahoo groups are still a better method for getting free porn). So what happened? Fucking kismet, that's what. That bitch Fate is always sticking her nose where it's not wanted.

I come across an old friend from high school, not seen since graduation a couple years ago. We say hi, he's on his way to a class at the community college we're both standing in (cheap and easy credits, yo), so I ask him to write down his email, we'll talk later. The address doesn't work for shit. It has some suspicious punctuation before the "at" symbol. But removing what could just be an ink splotch still doesn't work. I'd really like to catch up with this person, but I've no way to contact him, nor am I incredibly likely to see him unless I devote a ridiculous amount of time to hanging around the community college. Where on Earth could I go to track down this person?

Facebook.

Nearly everyone high school or college age has a Facebook account, enabling them to be found by name, region and school by anyone who registers their own account with a valid email address (though it probably has to be connected to a school or business these days). I had the poor bastard's page within ten minutes (and that's because I had to register). So, I located the person, sent a message, and that was it...

...or so I thought.

You see, the addictive thing about Facebook is this: it's free, it's accesible, and my generation is easily amused. So now I start combing this person's Friends List, then comb those people's Friend Lists, then comb those people's Friends List. Soon enough, I had seen pages for practically everyone in my senior class schedule (and those people at graduation you ask, "you went to school with us?"). So of course, I get bored. I start typing. I start messaging. Soon I'm amassing a Friends List. And now I'm caught in the viral web. A little fly who got too curious and is now stuck in the electronic social quagmire, being sucked at by other users. I'd tried so hard to get away from some of these people. I just wanted to say hello to a few I'd had lunch with a few times.

That bastard should have just given me the right email address or none at all.