24 Hours on Facebook

Not 24 hours straight. (Please, I have kids, work, laundry dishes, and grocery shopping to do. ) I've been signed up for 24 hours! A few friends invited me recently, my sister-in-law said I should try it, and at a recent book club meeting, a friend, who poo-poos her cell phone, said she's on Facebook. Although she does skype, and what do I know from skyping?

So here's my world view as I approach signing up in Facebook. First, there's the secret wire tapping conspiracy theorist part of me that thinks I'm going to be on some watch list. But the rumors about the closing of Guantanamo make that seem like less of a concern. There were also the concerns I had when I started this blog; ethics, putting myself out there, making it all public. Now I might be doing the same thing on an application that I didn't understand. Who could read what, who would see my pictures? Would some creepy guy from my high school track me down? (Possibly, yes)

But there were forces pushing me too. The need to keep up to speed with what "the kids" are doing, before I become some hapless parent that doesn't know how to turn on her own computer. This ties into my philosophy lately that I'll learn how to text when my kids start doing it. Then there was the motivation that my friends were doing it. I can be talked into a lot of things because my friends do it, except, apparently, yoga.

So I finally bit the bullet yesterday. After signing up, and letting Facebook do the vulcan mind meld with my Outlook .pst files, I found there were people I already emailed who were FB members. Now why I would want the woman I call in Vancouver, BC with my questions about our customs invoice, to be a FB friend, I don't know. But I could.

One of the first people who replied back to my initial friend query, was afriend and former colleague. She still does some computer work for us, so I wasn't too surprised she replied back so quickly. She warned me about how addicting it was. Second response from a friend was about what a time suck it was. After spending an hour managing all these responses and refreshing my page, I got an inkling of what they were talking about.

But here's the deal. There's an upside. I've heard more from my nieces and nephews in the past few days than I usually hear in a year. They're not talking directly to me, at least not always, but I'm getting this little bit of window into their lives. And they can get a little picture of me, and confirm, once and for all, that I am the wacky Aunt.

Now I'm trying to come up with my new Facebook values system. When a friend's 14 year old niece requests you be her friend, it's not that she likes you a lot, it's more likely a numbers game. I'm not taking it personally. I'm enjoying watching the way young people are interacting. I'm enjoying JJake's playlist at work, and ECT's and Jennifer's dog pictures. And I'm really wondering why my 13 year old friend changed her relationship status from married to single. Is that some kind of code? Should I poke her or put something on her wall? So far it's pretty fun, and if I'm lucky, someone might tell me tonight what cardhu is. I hear you drink it!