Our demographics show that most Facebook members are the under-40’s. I was dragged screaming and kicking to join in by a cousin who is a certified Facebook addict and under 40. Oh well, what could I lose. Friendship is a good and positive thing. There is no shortage of the possible friends, or friends of your friends, that you could have. The same with relatives, cousins thrice removed and so on.
After a couple of months, I learned that hard way what “hooking up” means: peering through my thick lenses at faces I have forgotten through the years, a glimmer of recognition through their siblings or kids. Sigue man garud, let’s see if there is any positive vibe I can gain from this. Sure, there is a lot of background noise to it: my daughter’s best friend who is at grad school at UP Diliman and his weird (“Mom! It’s not weird at all…”) taste in music, worship of skateboarding and other stuff I have no interest in whatsoever. But as a “friend” I consider him a friend subset, which is the whole point of Facebook: it allows you to link up with acquaintances who otherwise you would not be spending a minute to contact.
Relatives are another matter: hey, the kids I knew, now have different family names, and their Photos show little clones of themselves blowing birthday candles or sleeping with the Golden Retriever named Buddy. And hey, being Ilocana it saves me postage by sending unlimited messages to a friend or a set of friends. I don’t carry around an iPhone or any of the smarty phones in the market known for their affectation factor, so Facebook meets my need to “make a statement” or be in touch or stick my nose where it does not belong (nice!). It is so astonishing what you discover in Facebook: it is a relative experience, connecting with people of various network values: at work, church, neighbors, whatever your social circle takes you to.
But enough of me.
As a Facebook user, you probably have explored the possibilities: but for the holdouts, I believe you will find it an interesting experience, because of its tracking applications, for recreation (warning: it really could become addictive) or maybe it would have the opposite effect: why add one more burden to the already-overloaded low-speed Internet connection that I have?
Padasenyo, a.
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