The Only Good Thing About Social Networking
I think it’s pretty clear that, while I’ve signed up for a number of social networking sites, I don’t like them. They have a massive number of flaws — for every site, the top two are inept design and the security issues associated with tossing a shitload of personal data onto a very impersonal website, but those aren’t the only two — that aren’t quite outweighed by the positives. In fact, I can only think of one positive.
I don’t enjoy the neurotic self-reflection caused by something as meaningless as someone you never hung out with in high school and/or college sending you a message or friend request, considering the social ramifications of ignoring or denying as heavily as you might consider ditching a legitimate friend’s birthday party in favor of hanging around a porn shop. I might be taking the whole thing too seriously, but I know I’m not the only one — and that’s the problem. These are people I know, personally. Whether I like them or not, they’re real people, and actions — even those as simple as clicking a button on a web form — can hurt.
I’d have to really hate a person to flat-out deny a friend request (and I have denied several, so if any of them are reading this blog: now you know), but that’s just the tip of the emotional iceberg: there’s the sadness and meanness felt when you receive a friend request from somebody you obviously knew at some point but don’t remember at all, the frustration and irritation felt when you decide to accept a friend request and find yourself inundated with ads for the person’s band or horrible, horrible standup comedy and realize they never wanted to reconnect — they just want you to come and cheer them on. Worst of all, there’s the lack of grudge-based masturbation (or grudgerbation) when somebody you distinctly aren’t friends with privatizes her profile, stripping you of access to her collection skanky photos. Not that’s that ever happened to me. Repeatedly.
Social networking unleashes a torrent of high emotion and endless confusion unlike anything experienced outside the hallowed halls of your average junior high school. Why do people want to expose themselves to that?
Here’s the only reason I can think of:
Dateline: Chicago, Autumn of 1997. My sophomore year of high school. Here’s the setup (similar to the setup from a few days ago, but here’s the refresher if you missed it): over the course of my freshman year, I got to know a teacher I’m calling Mr. Hart* pretty well because of my writing and obsession with gaining approval from pseudo-authority figures. At the end of the year, the teacher in charge of the school’s limited “creative writing” department moved to a different school, and Hart was given the opportunity to take over. He convinced me to join up with the creative writing club (Write-On, a name I certainly hope was created when the school opened in the mid-’60s rather than when I attended in the late ’90s), and there I met a group of weirdos and outcasts who greeted my writing with the most terrifying response I’d ever experienced: respect and encouragement.
Another member of the club was Phoebe, a quiet senior named who rarely spoke and always had this expression on her face like she had better things to do. As someone who also has that expression on his face at nearly all times, I can tell you that this didn’t mean she had anything better to do. She was one of those people who had that look, even while reading her own work, that somehow combined consternation and boredom, and then when called upon to give feedback, she’d dazzle you with insight and understanding, and she knew more grammar rules (by name, at that) than anyone I’ve met before or since. It’s kind of a nerdy turn-on, and she was pretty cute in a frumpy kind of way.
So that fall, when I barely even knew her (we got to know each other much better over the course of the year, and in fact the incident I’m about to describe is most of the reason why), we went to the University of Chicago with Mr. Hart, Mr. Battaglia, and a few other members of the creative writing club and AP English class. Kurt Vonnegut was speaking there, and although I barely had him on my radar at the time, the level of excitement and reverence from Hart and Battaglia made me think this was a man I needed to check out.
Phoebe and I rode in a car with Mr. and Mrs. Hart, while the rest of the kids piled into Battaglia’s SUV and one of the other students’ cars. She was typically taciturn, so I overcompensated by yammering without end. But something fairly amazing happened — for the first time in the two months I’d known her, she shed her seeming mild annoyance and started to smile. Then I got a few laughs out of her. And before I knew it, an actual two-person conversation was taking place.
Afterward, on the ride home, she pretended to fall asleep, leaned her body against mine, rested her head on my shoulder. I knew she was pretending because, even though I was too dumb to realize she was sending me the strongest signal a woman had ever sent me, I wasn’t dumb enough to think she’d actually fallen asleep. This was the first time a woman had ever touched me in a way that didn’t involve beating the shit out of me (thanks for the memories and emotional scarring, sis!), and while I didn’t understand the high-intensity signal and did nothing, really, beyond befriending Phoebe, I’ll never forget that hour in the backseat of a high school teacher’s car. (Try to take that statement out of context!)
And here’s the thing: I had the amazing opportunity to watch Kurt Vonnegut participate in a Q&A in the autumn of his life, and I remember almost nothing about it except the ride there and the ride back.
I lost track of Phoebe after she graduated in ‘98. My sister — in Phoebe’s class — ran into her a few times and kept me updated, but I had no contact information at all. This was just before the social networking/easy stalking boom of the early ’00s. So the one tiny thing MySpace blessed me with was the ability to reconnect with her a decade later. Since she found me** and things have kinda been like we never fell out of each others’ lives, I have to believe she never forgot that night, either. It may have happened without social networking, but I doubt it. Also, if it had, I’d be running around screaming about how fate is real and true and start rambling all kinds of zodiac bullshit. So I’m grateful to MySpace for getting me reacquainted with Phoebe, and you all should be grateful that MySpace spared you that crap.
*Not his real name.
**It’s my awesomely narcissistic social-networking policy to not send any friend requests whatsoever; if someone wants to contact me, they have to do the legwork.
Posted by Stan on May 29, 2008 1:15 PM | Permalink | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em | Digg It
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