My mom, a self-labeled social butterfly, resisted Facebook for an impressive amount of time. In 2012, however, I convinced her to sign up, if only for the sake of Words with Friends as we both enjoy a good game of Scrabble (yeah, yeah, it's not the same, but I'm seven-hundred miles away, so we have to make sacrifices). Recently, she has proven to be like most other parents who get a Facebook page -- utterly clueless. Her latest status reads, "It's Rosemary. This whole Facebook thing still has me confused!!" One of her sisters duly commented, "...thanks for telling us you are Rosemary but we kinda already knew that lol." I love my mom. I really, really do. But can someone, for the love of God, have a free Facebook class somewhere? (Preferably not online.)
When she originally got a Facebook page, Mom insisted she insisted she was only going to use Facebook for playing Words with Friends. Well, that lasted all of two months. She recently claimed that she was only going to use it to keep in touch with people she doesn't get to talk to anymore. I'm open to betting on how long before it "extends" to immediate family members.
My brother is somewhere between my mom and my dad when it comes to the use of Facebook. He understands it, though he uses it infrequently. What makes his page frustrating for me as an English major, however, is the abundance of purposeful grammatical errors. Let me offer you a fragment (no pun intended) of a recent status: "well b good togeather so obv the only reason ppl say we shouldnt b togeather..." Excuse me while I get out my red pen. I avoid saying things to him about his bastardization of the English language, but good Lord, my beautiful language is going to hell.
I may also point out that my brother "likes" pages that any typical teenage boy would like. Unfortunately, some of these pages are occasionally featured at the top of his profile page. I'm so glad to know that my brother likes "freaky girls" and "clown girls." Oh, and, nice boobs, girl in the picture. Thank you for sharing. I'm so glad I have that image in my mind.
My dad, on the other hand, has had a Facebook page for longer. He knows the ins-and-outs more or less, although he goes through spurts during which he will post six or seven YouTube videos of rock 'n' roll bands from the 1950s and 60s as his status. That is, six or seven videos within fifteen minutes. He's also that guy who shares all of the badly-designed graphic political, religious, and inspirational messages.
All-in-all, Dad navigates Facebook pretty well. For a while, he was rather addicted to it. The minute he came home from work, Dad went to the computer room to post about whatever thoughts he had on the commute home and browse the most recent updates of his "friends." I say "friends" with quotation marks because many of the people on my dad's friends list includes people from high school he barely talked to. (Dad, like myself as I have mentioned in a previous post, is and was an introvert, so this is not too shocking.)
Meanwhile, I have been cleaning out my Facebook friends once in a while, taking care to purge high school "friends" especially. Let's face it: high school sucked, why would I want any kind of reminder of my time there? Networking opportunity, you say? Well, to that, I say poo! These people never supported me in high school and I have no reason to expect them to support me now. They have no room in my "real life" social circle, and therefore have no place in my virtual one. Besides, if you want to have networking opportunities, you're better off with LinkedIn. Now you have one page for all of your beer-drinking-partying escapades and one for your fine work with the non-profit you did after your undergrad. Congratulations.
Or, of course, you could be like me and get a blog in which you are just a total low life, complaining about how everyone else uses social media.
Abby, it is sad that I feel so inferior in this day and age. When I was learning to type in high school, it was a big thing that we had an IBM electric typewriter. However, we were still using the drum copier and carbon paper.
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