I Don't Want To Surf Facebook Anymore

I've been off of Facebook for almost two years. I chose to delete my old account for various reasons and I never missed it, although I did miss the people; most of them. One major reason I got off though, was I considered it an enormous waste of time; there were times I would realize I had been sitting at my computer scrolling through my news feed for what seemed like hours. I felt exhausted afterwards, much like a drug or alcohol addict after going on a binge. There was also the same absence of satisfaction that comes with any addiction. I had spent all that time looking for something I was never going to find. So I kicked the habit and never looked back.
Until yesterday, that is. I opened a new account for a purely selfish reason: so I can link my writing to it. Maybe I should change the name of my blog to Hubris In Excess if, in my pride, I think I need to share this with people and that they could somehow benefit from reading what I have to say- about anything. But as a writer I have a need to be heard, I have to get it out there where people can read it so I figure Facebook and Twitter are as good of places to start as any.
So I opened a new account, added a picture or two, friended my family and a few other friends to start and began trying to figure out how to link my blog to my page. As a side note, my computer doesn't recognize "friended" as an actual word. I had to look it up and, no, "friended" is not the result of Facebook changing the English language. It turns out friended is an archaic Middle English word from around 1400. So Facebook doesn't get credit for adding the word to our language, just setting us back 600 years.
After getting off the computer last night I began to think about people I used to know when I was young. I grew up, well, sort of, I still haven't finished; but I partially grew up in Columbus, Ohio. My parents marriage fell apart when I was in my early teens and I ended up eventually moving to Tucson and leaving my childhood behind in a suburb of Columbus. I've always envied people who grew up in a stable home and maintained lifelong friendships. I never got to enjoy that and part of me wanted to look around on Facebook and see how these people had turned out.
So I got back online and surfed a few profiles and looked at their friend lists to see who I could remember. I did this in what I feel is a very real anonymity. Were any of these people to walk in and catch me doing this with their friend lists most likely their response would be, "Who are you?" I'm pretty certain that these people would not remember me or have any interest in looking me up. I was a social reject back in the day: overweight, braces, I also wore glasses from as far back as first grade. Bifocals. Yes, my eyes were that bad at age six. They got stronger through the wearing of bifocals and for the rest of my life I've worn single vision lenses, but I think it's almost time for bifocals again, I'm not getting any younger. You can probably imagine how well I fit in as a hip, fat, bifocals wearing, braces sporting, young nerd. Not very memorable in a positive sense. Maybe I'd be remembered for being a goof.
The people I was looking up on Facebook all had lives, for the most part; the "in" group; I'll get to them later. There were; however, the people on there that were more like me. There were some names I saw on friend lists where I was actually finding myself happy to see these people were still alive. I felt relief for these people with severely self-destructive lifestyles and way worse childhoods than what I had experienced who were still with us on the earth. I found myself cheering for them inside; they had made it. They had carved out a place for themselves in this world and appeared to be happy. That is one of the lies of Facebook, of course. You can appear to be as happy as you think you should be, but we all have struggles we hide from the larger world. These people were having good times and bad, but they were still here to share their happiness. There is no button for it, but I liked that.
Sadly, there were also the people that couldn't even manage to create the false front of happiness that is so easy to obtain through social media. These people looked tortured in their eyes. You could see the loneliness of their souls written on their faces. People I had known as a kid had grown up to have no friends, no family, no pictures of anyone and most of their feed was filled with posts about what level of a game they had currently achieved or messages from their mother wishing them happy birthday. This was heart breaking. I didn't even like some of these people back when I walked among them, but now part of me wanted to reach out to them and tell them, "I'm here for you, I'll be your friend!" Then reality would creep into the picture and I would wonder what the results of such an outreach would be. Are some of these people mentally unstable? Would they latch onto me in a grip of desperation so tight that it made it difficult to breathe? Would any of them be dangerous to communicate with? Maybe I read too much Stephen King as a kid, maybe I should reach out to some of these people; but the reality is, I won't. I have enough of my own burdens in life and I have to decide that feeling sorry for them is all the compassion I can afford.
Then there were the "in" people. Many of these people went on to be successful by the world's standards, some not so much. It's with that judgemental statement that I'm reminded of a feeling I had last night when I got the idea for writing this: I'm violating these people's privacy, or at least, I feel I am. That's strange isn't it? They put it out there for everyone to see and somehow I still feel like I'm prying into their private lives. It's such a personal thing, seeing how someone's entire life is playing out; especially in the context of comparing it to 300 other people on a friend list. You can see a bell curve being displayed right in front of your eyes and it's people's lives we're talking about. There are the losers, the modestly successful and the overachievers all lined up and waiting to be scrutinized. Or maybe I'm too cynical? Maybe this is just a group of friends all sharing with each other. As an outsider looking in on a group I was taken away from, it feels different. I wish I had had the opportunity as a child to remain in my small town and grow up with these folks, but would I now be the tortured, lonely guy playing Farmville or would I be the smiling and happy guy with my family?
I was beginning to talk about the "in" people though; let's start with the girls, now women. Again with the bell curve, this time it's a curve within the curve. There are women that have the same tortured look as the guys with no friends. Only these women have friends and they had it all back in the day; the looks, the popularity, the boyfriends. The looks are fading; naturally, it happens, yet some of them are trying desperately to hold on, dressing like it's 1985 and acting like the party never ends. The fact that some of these girls, ones that I had enormous crushes on as a young reject; the fact that they decided they weren't beautiful enough and had various surgeries is a depressing revelation. Especially when I remember how ugly I felt as a fat little kid with glasses, loving these unattainable girls. The world we live in puts too much pressure on women to be outwardly beautiful. I discovered that, what I considered to be some of my dream girls back in 1983 had gotten breast implants. You might say, well that's their choice. Sure, it is, but as a boy in 8th grade I never once looked at any of these girls and thought they would look better with bigger breasts. They were absolutely beautiful just the way they were. The world affects us all I guess, in lots of different ways.
There were also the women you could see struggling through life. Maybe they were the unattractive ones who were still single at this point in their lives. They work a dead end job and smile for the camera, but they look unhappy. I hope this doesn't sound harsh, because I say it with sadness. Looking back, as kids, none of us knew what lay ahead. If we knew how many of us would end up being the lonely ones, the forgotten ones, maybe we would have treated each other with more kindness instead of trying to be cool or live up to some social expectation the world imposed on us. Maybe we would have loved each other more.
There were the successful women too, and some were aging gracefully with families. At least there were a few things to feel good about on this trip down memory lane, if that's the right way to describe it. More like a new game show called This Is Their Life.
Most of the popular guys ended up being successful. I noticed something I considered unsettling though, most all of them ended up living very similar lives on the exterior. They went to Ohio State for business, liked the Buckeyes and got jobs in some sort of sales management. The number of people I saw who walked this road was amazing to me. I know these are real people, with real lives on the other side of the computer screen, but if you were an alien looking in on planet earth you would think these people are all pretty much the same. I wondered for a moment if that's the life I should have lived. Did I miss out on something? Should I be the regional director of sales for blah blah blah?
Then there were the guys who had it all back in the day and looked like they lost their minds somewhere along the way. Something happened to them and now they look like they belong to some fringe group like Anonymous or possibly a neofascist organization. What lead them down this road? Something caused them to become extremely disillusioned; or enlightened, depending on your world view, and lead them away from the societal norm they thrived in during school.
All in all I left Facebook feeling very thoughtful about life last night. I don't consider myself better or worse than any of these people and I don't consider them better or worse than me. I was just making observations that were slanted according to the culture I grew up in. I ended up where I am in life because that's how my life has played out. I made decisions and some were made for me. People would probably look at me with the same eye I had for their lives last night, if they were to remember who I was and had any presuppositions about where I should be now.
Life is a funny thing and a frightening thing sometimes, but all we can do is live it, hopefully with faith. I have only the best wishes for all those people and hope they find happiness.
I don't want to surf Facebook anymore.