Social Life

Back in the day (circa 2004) I started a Myspace account. I can’t remember when, but I ended up deleting my profile because the account started to make me feel uncomfortable. I had watched one too many Dateline NBC specials on sexual predators, so I decided to part ways with the site. Then in the summer of 2006 I opted to join Facebook: the single most addicting way to connect with friends and commandeer my cool new “freshman in college” status.

Ithaca College suggested that I open a Facebook account in order to meet people before classes began in the fall. I didn’t go crazy stalking my peers or befriending each of the 1,000+ incoming freshman, but instead let friendships develop naturally at the university without the help of social networking. The thing is, Facebook does not mirror natural relationships perfectly. As the video alludes to above, the site can sometimes manufacture friendships and hinder professional connections. Even though I don’t connect with people at whim on Facebook, I could probably go through my list of friends and delete about 60 percent, retaining only those people who I actually speak to now or plan to speak to during the remaining years of my life.

I’m in the mood to go through a Facebook purge. Lately I’ve been wondering why I’m still connected to people I haven’t seen since the 9th grade and the friends-of-friends I met exactly one time during college or my studies abroad. I mean, do I really want all those people seeing photos of me in a swimming suit from this summer? Probably not.

Since I’m becoming disenchanted with my Facebook, it’s hard to imagine investing more of my time in another social networking site. Google+ came on to the scene a few weeks ago, and I was invited by three or four different people to join the site. The invitations served as Google’s attempt to stagger the growth of its new baby and test it for bugs, but Google+ hasn’t exactly achieved the success that the search engine superpower imagined.

I, for example, started my new account quite a few days ago and have completed exactly one task on the site. I uploaded a wonky picture to my profile. The photo needs to be replaced again because my quick Photoshop crop left my head floating in the frame at a weird 45 degree angle and the whole thing looks just odd.

This oddity matches my sentiments toward the site, though. I don’t want to invest more of my energy and attention in this new form of social networking. I already use Facebook, Twitter, and technically this Tumblr is a type of social networking because I follow my blogger friends. I don’t feel like devoting more time to sitting at a computer when that’s what I do all day at work. My allegiance to Google+ is halfhearted, and unless something changes drastically, I’m going to ignore the site even though it has some pretty nifty features.

One perk of Google+ is that users can put people into specific “circles” based on real life relationships. Examples of these relationships include Friends, Family and Coworkers. My very own coworker added his own specialty circle called “Vagrants.” That’s where I’d put the people who come into my life infrequently like the middle school comrades and the meet-and-greet people from college I wrote about earlier.

The problem is that even with a “Vagrant” circle I’d still be digitally connected to people I rarely see and with whom I don’t share common interests. 

Instead, I’d like to go back to the good old days when you had to accidentally run into people at the grocery store who you haven’t seen in years, say a brisk hello/goodbye and walk away wondering why on earth it seemed like a good idea to leave the house without showering even though you only needed to buy one item.

Cora and I share a great memory like this from a summer day years ago when we were assigned the task of giving Emma, our Golden Retriever, a bath. We put on the rattiest clothes we owned, swept our bedhead hair up into disheveled ponytails and filled up the baby swimming pool with water.

Then we realized we were out of dog shampoo.

We jumped in Cora’s super-stylish Pontiac 6000 and headed for town. As we pulled into the EconoFoods parking lot, I can distinctly remember Cora saying, “We’re going in, grabbing the shampoo and running out. Don’t speak to anyone and let’s be quick about it.” Of course as we entered the store we were bombarded by friends from school, 4-H club parents and even a former babysitter. Cora was mortified and I was embarrassed. (I didn’t have as far to fall because I was still in the braces, glasses and no makeup stage.)

This Econo encounter is what I call a true vagrant circle, and it’s especially genuine considering we looked like hobos at the time.

We sulked home, scrubbed the scuzzy puppy and somehow survived without posting our woes on social media by saying, “OMG! So embarrassing! Went to #Econo and saw @BestFriend and @SciencePartner when I looked like $hit.”

And better yet, we got to berate our mom for running out of doggy suds in person rather than by posting it on her Facebook wall. She didn’t really feel bad for us, but maybe that’s because we didn’t get the chance to use an emoticon to express our true feelings. :-(

Link via vanessagene and video by Epipheo Studios.

• Tags
• social networks
• friends
• communications
• internet
• relationships
• growing up
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+