The Facebook Blues

Ramblings Post #131
There are a number of things that shouldn't bother us. If they can get American Cheese in Central India, exactly how much poorer than Bill Gates you are, is the price of piece of cheesecake in Borneo fair? None of these matter, unless you're in Borneo and the cheesecake is looking mighty tasty. And why this is bothering me, I don't even know.

I've been defriended.

I can't believe it irritated me to realize that my friend count on facebook is below where I think I thought it was, which means at some point in the past few months, I haven't made the cut when some people have started culling out the useless. It shouldn't bother me at all...there are a lot of folks I don't even remember friending on my list so I'm certain it must be the same for other folks with me. I should be getting igged on the regular. And apparently I am, but only just noticed.

Still it kinda bothers me for some reason. I mean, a facebook friendship has got to be the easiest friendship to maintain. You don't have to do anything! No meeting for drinks on odd nights, missed calls, no promises made to avoid an argument, no boring activities only they enjoy, no changing plans to help someone bury a dead body at 3am, no requests to help move, none of that. You update, they update and click..it's over. No effort buddies. You can even click the occasional "like" button to keep it lively. What could be simpler?

I mean, I'm not worth doing nothing? You actually actively decided to remove me? And we haven't seen each other in ages? Gee. That kinda stinks.

I used to have conversations with people who had been defriended. Their voices would rise, they'd get a little heated about it, but I figured they were getting upset about nothing. Who really cared if that friend from summer camp in 1982 that was your best friend for a weekend defriended you? "Did it really matter?" I would ask, a little derision in my voice.

Apparently it did.

I thought for a minute it might have been a privacy issue, but unless you count that first minute after you friend somebody, where you do a quick browse through their photos to see how bad they've aged - the vast majority of us don't really look at each others pages. So you're connected, and still private by dint of casual laziness.

And yet, I've been cut.

Forsooth, for I am wounded by the harshest cut of them all. The cut of oblivion, the cut of indifference. For they cared so little the blade only hit me on the way out...by accident. I am ...undone.

Barkeep, the dramatic scene calls for me to die WITH a martini...hello!