I finally convinced Paul to rejoin facebook. It stemmed from me shouting out random things about our friends that I knew and he didn't. Like, "Hey guess what! So and so are engaged!" or "Did you know that this person moved to this place?" or "Let's go to this thing that's happening at this place on Friday night." Every time he would ask, "How did you know that?" and I would respond loudly, "FACEBOOK!"
This was followed by Paul asking me lots of funny questions about how it works. Such as:
"So if this person requested me to be their friend, does that mean they can see me?"
"What does wall-to-wall mean?"
"Why did they poke me? That's not very nice."
Now I don't update my status every single day, or constantly update and change everything on my profile, but it's pretty crazy how many people are on it these days. I think I know people from virtually every circle of friends I have ever had on facebook. I do value it for certain reasons, if not for the extremely impersonal way of keeping track of people these days. But seriously- I suppose that if people don't really call other people anymore just to say hello, and if even a personal email is hard to come by these days, blogging and facebook have replaced all other more personal forms of communication, and if you hold out on either, there is a whole world of contact that you are not a part of. How did we come to this?
I've realized that I really like impersonal forms of communication too. I like that sort of voyeuristic way of keeping tabs on people I haven't talked to in eons and probably would not ever think of calling up personally. I like that element of surprise when you find out someone you know is doing something totally bizzare with their careers (like a very shy high school classmate I discovered is now a hand model!). In short, I suppose I like knowing what people are up to, think about, or are doing with themselves without having to ask them them about it personally. I don't really think that's a good thing.
Maybe I should actually commend Paul for holding out this long.
