Monday, January 4, 2010

facebook

I resisted facebook for a while. Finally my friend convinced me to join as a way to see pictures of her children. So I gave in. I know its all fake and meaningless yet I somehow manage to be hurt by it. The friend who convinced me to go on never comments on my status posts yet she will comment on all others including MY real life friends as they update the going ons of their families. I also notice that many use pictures of their children as their profile picture and their status’es are exclusively about the kids. Others will automatically comment or “like” anything child related. So I found myself realizing that as much as in real life I try to convince myself that its not all about having kids, if I were to view facebook as a microcosm of the real world it leaves me once again realizing that if you don’t have kids people have nothing to say to you and you may as well not exist.

2 comments:

  1. I see it as a 2-way street. If I want people to comment on my pictures, I have to comment on theirs and sometimes even go so far as to tag people in certain photos that I want them to see. For most people, it is really all about what shows up on their homepage. There are certain of my "friends" who never register on my homepage despite new statuses and pictures, and I'm sure the same applies for my name on theirs. So I can choose to be hurt or do something about it.

    As for the children, I have a 1 year old, and to my knowledge I've only ever made two statuses about him (one that he was crawling and one that he was walking so people wouldn't complain that I kept them out of the loop). Personally, I find it obnoxious when people can't think of anything to write about but their kids. It's THEIR blog after all! I guess some people's identities revolve only around their children, which shouldn't be the case. Yes, you can love your children and spend most of your waking (and sleeping!) hours on them, but that doesn't mean that you're not your own person. Anyway, from my circle of friends, hardly any of them feel the need to update the world about their children's habits either. If we want to know that kind of information from each other, that's what email is for!

    I think it's all about stages. It takes some people time to get over the fact that they're engaged, then married, then with child. As difficult as it is for me to accept that, I have to because they're not going to change any time soon, so the only room for change in that scenario is for me to take a more mature outlook and not be annoyed/hurt/offended or any other adjective of your choice.

    P.S. You can "friend" me on Facebook! ;) I love reading people's interesting statuses and writing long messages (as you can probably tell!). You wouldn't have to see boring monologues about my son every day. Maybe you should expand your circle of friends. :)

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  2. Nah, people are just rude on facebook as they are in real life. Also, when many people update their statuses or post things , your update may not appear in their newsfeed.

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