What's with the Facebook Friends?

I haven’t been doing much updating on Twitter nor Facebook lately. I felt as if I was getting swept up in the documenting of my every move and wasn’t spending enough time living in the moment. Plus, it got annoying trying to keep with friends I honestly didn’t care about anymore. It started to feel like an obligatory waste of time to comment on their status updates, look at their funny photos and answer the dumb quiz "how well do you know so-and-so?"requests.

When I finally decided to reconnect again, I found several pending friend requests to administer. I love getting friend requests. About the time I hit 250 on my list, I figured I’d maxed out. I couldn’t think of another person I cared to get into contact with again. But alas, I’m now over 350 as people still keep popping out of the woodwork.

As I was weeding through the friend requests, a few oddities jumped out at me. This is what I just don’t get about Facebook friending:

• Why do people who don’t know me want to be my friend? I don’t care that we have six friends in common. If we’re not friends in the real world, I don’t want to be your friend in cyberspace. I’ve got enough people to keep up with, much less the ones I don’t know.


• If you send me a friend request, why don’t you write something to me too? Whenever I send a friend request, I always include a personal message. If I bother to request your friendship, that means I do care what you're up to and I would like to catch up. I don’t understand why people bother if they truly don't have a word to say to me. What’s the point?


• Let’s also not extend our rekindled online friendship past the line that the real-life friendship existed within. For example, I got a friend request from a girl with whom I went to elementary school. We were friends back then, but were not friends into junior high or high school. I was happy to reconnect and catch up on those early days via a few back and forth messages. But enough is enough. I don’t want to exert any more energy on a friendship I willingly gave up more than 30 (!) years ago; but she doesn’t seem to take the hint. That’s freaking annoying!


• Then there’s the friends you find again, truly want to put in some effort to reconnect with, but neither of you will go out on a limb to take the next step. I’ve been playing it with a few friends—it’s called the “You Call Me” game. It goes like this: “Hey! Great to see you here! It’s been a zillion years! Call me at 555-1212”. Then the reply message says: “Great to see you too! Kids are adorable. Call me at 444-1313.” And then you never speak (nor write) again.

What about you? I'd love to hear your annoyances with Facebook.

Random Pea-Brained Thoughts

1. I refuse to spend $200 on a pair of jeans unless they make my ass sing.
2. Good news! Apparently, Starr & I are not alone. In times of crisis, women are more likely splurge on shopping sprees than in normal times.
3. Why do we stop being friends with our Maid of Honor? Weren’t these women supposed to be our closest friends when we got married?
4. I hope that Izzy and George are both dead.
5. Planning a girls trip shouldn’t be more stressful than the daily life stresses from which we’re trying to escape.
6. Why is it true that our most high maintenance friends can’t see themselves as that? Having to explain it all the more supports the theory.
7. I admit it, my Cougar blog post was not my best. I hear ya.
8. If I haven’t called in a few days it’s not because I’m mad at you. I just don’t have anything new to say.
9. Computer illiteracy is just as bad as reading illiteracy. Get with the times!
10. I acknowledge my Twittering is a narcissistic habit. Why wouldn’t the world be interested in following my every move?
11. If you have more than a few hundred “friends” on Facebook, you’re just a friend collector to placate your own insecurities.

Wishing you a safe & sunny Memorial Day weekend!

Twittering now too

It's official. After exactly one day, I'm hooked on twitter. It's so much fun to release my one-sentence ramblings rather than writing a whole blog post. I promise not to stop blogging, but enjoy the Twitter Tidbits too! If you like, you can click the link "Follow me on Twitter" to really keep up. It's fun. Oh, and you can follow Ashton Kutcher if you want to also...but his tweets don't make much sense to me. :)

The 140 word post

What do men bitch about more?
The nagging or the lack of sex? I wonder.

Boy, I threw you all for a loop with this post--looking for the rest of the story. Sorry. That's all I had to say. Just one line. The thought crossed my mind the other night, so I asked the question and hoped for your response.

I want to tweet on Twitter. It's the perfect, 30-second solution for me. My avid readers ask why I don't post here more and my answer is always the same. I love to blog. But sometimes I feel like I only want to give a 140 word thought. That's all the words twitter allows. I don't want to write paragraphs and construct a story. I want to say what's on my brain that very second. I want to write what I'm thinking and not tie it to examples. Now I get it. I've caught up with the idea of Social Media in a Web 2.0 world.

I'm going to twitter now too. I'll help set it up on your computer for you, don't worry. Let me know what you think.