April 15: Another Facebook Grief

I know I've written about it in complete excess already, but I have another grief with Facebook. I still don't understand the fascination. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely addicted. I obsessively check every status update to see if I've received any thumbs up likes because seeing "Four people like this" is thrilling. I post videos that I find entertaining for the enjoyment of others. I love it when people write on my wall. My absolute favorite thing about Facebook, however, is the mere topic of Facebook in every day conversation. In my opinion, casually mentioning the social networking website in a conversation is pure comic gold. If I tell a girl that I've just met in real life that my goal is to write all over her Facebook wall, it's an instant joke that she'll never forget. (Don't use that unless you plan on giving me credit.)

As obsessed with the site as I am, the idea behind publishing a list of favorite activities and interests is a bizarre one. To connect that list with past friends and colleagues is even more strange, though. It's cool to see what your friends from high school have been up to and when I received a friend request from one of my teachers, I became giddy with excitement. I thought it was hilarious that someone three times my senior was on a social networking site originally intended for college students.

It's one thing to use Facebook to reconnect with old friends, but to use it to play games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars is plain sick. However, that complaint is for another post. My grief with Facebook today is that I don't know how to react towards a person in real life after being added to his or her list of friends. At some point, he either saw my little picture and thought, "I know him. I'll add him to my Friends list" or he made the effort to look me up. Either way, he made a connection. I receive an email telling me that Joe Blow (I don't actually have any friends with that name, but I would love to add that guy to my list!) added me as a friend on Facebook. I usually oblige and click the little confirm button. Done. I am now friends with Joe Blow.

My dilemma now is that I don't know the proper interpersonal etiquette that I'm supposed to practice when I see Mr. Blow at work the next day. Am I supposed to say, "Hey, thanks for adding me" or "Gee, I'm sorry I didn't add you first?" Am I supposed to ignore it because that's the online world and we're in the real world? "What happens online stays online." The only acceptable reaction that I've come up with is to make a joke. With extreme sarcasm: "Hey, thanks for the invite to your list of friends!" It probably makes him feel uneasy, but at least I'm not ignoring the topic.

I've always felt slightly uncomfortable seeing someone in person that I had recently chatted with online. I don't know what it is, but when I see a person in the flesh after conversing with them through email or instant messaging, I almost feel like I was talking about them and not to them. Suddenly the conversation we had the night before feels lost and foreign and being added to someone's list of friends feels almost the same.

Alexander Graham Bell once said, "Mr. Watson, come here! I need to see you." Did Bell face the same dilemma the next time he saw Thomas Watson in person?. I'm hoping he did and that it's just a matter of time before I overcome my neurosis towards Facebook. At the rate that technology is advancing and evolving, however, I'm sure Facebook will be long gone and I'll have something else to get paranoid over.