‘Friending’ in person is best
It took me three days to collect 88 friends on Facebook . . . and four days to be ordered offline by my daughter.
I’d embarrassed her with a public scolding when I didn’t like the swear word she used on the site. I didn’t realize when I sent my message that it could be seen by all my Facebook friends, and my daughter’s friends, and their friends . . . and everyone in the Facebook universe, to hear my daughter tell it.
I knew then that this social networking stuff isn’t as easy as it looks.
And I understand now why 8,000 people have joined the group “For the love of god -- don’t let parents join Facebook,” where discussion board questions run like this: “how can one get there parents to leave facebook without pissing them off.”
Bad news. You can’t.
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I thought I was ahead of the curve when I joined Facebook in February. But it turns out middle-age women like me are the site’s fastest-growing demographic.
Now, with 200 million members, Facebook is so yesterday. Twitter, it seems, is the new craze. Now I’m friending while everyone else is sending Tweets.
When I announced I’d joined, I got lots of advice in e-mails from readers about status messages and privacy settings. I also got a few laughs, courtesy of other clueless baby boomers.
Sheldon Kuna of Calabasas got “tagged” in a photo by one of his kids, but he didn’t know what the heck that meant. He had nine friends -- all his children’s pals -- on his Facebook list. When he turned 62, “two of them sent me birthday wishes, but I didn’t know how to thank them,” he said.
Christine Soderbergh’s daughter greeted her friend request with “eww mom, I don’t want you creeping around my space.” Her son allowed her to friend him, and then telephoned to tell her “how to e-mail him so I wasn’t on his wallpaper.”
It’s “wall,” Christine, not “wallpaper.” That’s why they don’t want us creeping around.
Some, like me, felt burdened by the constant status updates. Edna Ball, 59, of Whittier wondered why she should care “that an old high school acquaintance is making a big pot of fish stew in Ontario, Canada.”
But others, like Mindy Atwood, were delighted. “It is a relief to just sit down and say ‘Mindy is’ something, anything and people seem to care!”
Key word, Mindy, seem to.
Most people like joining online groups, posting YouTube links and taking such quizzes as “Which color is your aura?” or “What kind of shoe defines you?”
I wind up following the lives of strangers with an intensity that might brand me as a stalker.
Did Shirley find a good brisket recipe? How is Lawrence doing with the diet? What went wrong with Rhona’s matzo balls? She thought they were handled too much, but Phyllis said they might not have cooked long enough.
Maybe I’m just incurably nosy. I’ll spend hours poking around others’ profiles, studying their friends’ status postings.
And I see why kids want their parents off Facebook, as I try to fit my old conscience to this new era:
When my daughter’s 19-year-old friend posted a list of her favorite drinking games -- flippy cup, beer pong, drunk ball, Ride the Bus, King -- I had an urge to pick up the phone and call her mother.
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In two months, I’ve collected 326 Facebook friends. Most I wouldn’t recognize if they showed up wearing a name tag at my door. I’ve tracked down two old friends from my past, but we have yet to even chat. It seems being in touch online is enough.
Or is it?
On Saturday, at The Times Book Festival, I discovered three old friends in two hours, while I was on stage with my oldest daughter, doing a tag-team chat about my column.
A woman up front took the mike for a question and when I heard her voice, I knew it was Iris. Our daughters had gone to school together, but we lost touch when they graduated. Then, in the audience, I spotted Audrey; we were high school cheerleaders together. She was with her mother, Mrs. McBath, my 10th-grade algebra teacher.
I could hardly wait to finish speaking, so I could hug them.
And my daughter -- my Facebook guru -- was making her own discovery, off in the corner with Jessica, Iris’ daughter. They had been such close friends once, she called Jessica’s grandfather “grandpa.” But they went to different high schools, then off to college.
A few months ago, they “friended” each other. But until Saturday they had not spoken. They laughed and caught up, and by the time we left they were talking about how much fun it would be to move in together.
When it comes to “friending,” even my daughter agrees that Facebook is a poor substitute for a hug.
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