Facebook

Facebook, I hate you. You give me anxiety like I haven’t felt since the playground days of grade school. Yes I used to feel anxiety on the playground. “About what?” you ask. To name a few: Will someone save me a swing if they get to recess before me? What if we play Smurfs and everyone says I’m Gargamel? What if I make my friend April play jump rope with myself and Jill Whitecross and then turn into the devil and force April to wrap the jump rope around Jill until she can’t move and then get sent to the office? What if we all decide to bring our Cabbage Patch dolls in to school so we can play with them at recess and I bring my Koosa thinking it will be just as cool as a Cabbage Patch Kid and it isn’t, like, at all? Anyways, I do realize the irony of posting this blog post on Facebook while saying I hate Facebook. Is that actually irony? Or is irony like when I am told by a soothsayer that my child will die because of her lover so to keep her safe I lock her in a tower where she is fed by crows only to have her kill herself because she can’t be with her lover? Maybe that’s Greek Tragedy. Wait, I got it, irony is like what Alanis Morissette said about having a shit ton of spoons but needing a knife. Yes, that’s it. It’s all about silverware, people, silverware.

First off, since I’ve been on the Face I could be categorized by some as an “over” Facebooker. I over use, I over post, I over comment, I over stare at your pictures, I over friend. And then I over process questioning if I have over used, over commented, over stared (is that even English?) at your pictures, and over friended. I’ve had friends say, “I don’t want to post anything on so-and-so’s photo because I’m scared they may think I’m stalking them.” Comments such as these make me sweat. I comment on at least six photos a day. Once, a friend of mine who I met at school dared me to comment on every one of her photos. I did. All 380 of them. It took me 2 1/2 hours. You’re welcome. But I can typically self sooth (For you laymen out there ‘Self Sooth’ is a counseling word which means to sooth yourself. I know, I know. Tricky stuff. I had to go to school for two years to learn that). I feel better by reminding myself that stalking is when someone is sneaking into your life uninvited. An example of stalking is someone breaking into your home, standing over your bed, snapping Polaroid’s of you (No I have no idea why it’s a Polaroid camera. I don’t make the stalking rules, I just convey them) and then sending you the Polaroids in the mail with a letter that says, “You drool when you sleep” written in magazine cut out words. Whereas Facebook is more like you putting your bed outside on the sidewalk and someone staring at you. You can't blame the person staring at you. You can't dammit! Put your bed back inside if you are creeped out by me staring at you! 

Of course, because I over friend, I have had to deal with being defriended. My first experience with defriending was about two years ago. I was defriended by a girl who I went to high school with, she was a year older than me and I had exchanged, like, ten, maybe even twenty words with her in my lifetime. Which totally constitutes a Facebook friend request. I mean, she was practically in my top 100 people who were closest to me on the Face. She accepted my friendship request and I looked at her page to see how she sold herself. Solid pictures (although not many of them) she hadn’t changed much since 1992, she had a cute family and even a dog. Then, one day, I saw that she posted something on a mutual face friend page, I clicked her name to look at her page and we were no longer friends. Oh the humanity! I did a search for her name thinking maybe she was done with Facebook and that post was old. I wasn’t even sure that was possible but it was worth a shot. There she was. Facebook asked me if I would like to friend request her. (Dear Facebook, Should refriend requesting someone after they have defriended you really be an option? Dear Deidre, What kind of crazy distressed person is so desperate for others to validate them that they would convince themselves that they were defriended by mistake and that they should therefore refriend request someone? I don’t know Facebook! Maybe that crazy person’s name rhymes with Schmeidre Schally, maybe it doesn’t. I’m not a detective) I digress. Yes, I actually thought about about refriend requesting this person. And by thought about it I mean I refriend requested her. She must have silently ignored. I replayed the ten word (possibly twenty word) conversation we had over our life time in slow motion in my head to the song “The Way we Were”…which reminded me of movie theater popcorn and movies so I went to go see Iron Man because I want to have Robert Downey Jr.’s children. Question: Why is movie theater popcorn so much better than any other popcorn you get? I often wonder if you can go into the movie theater, buy popcorn and leave. It took me several weeks to get over my first experience of being defriended...and then silently ignoring. Now I’m a defriended pro.

So this leads me to defriending someone. Defriending someone makes me approximately two to three times more anxious than being defriended does. I never defriend someone because of them. I don’t stare at the persons Face page, shaking my fist in the air screaming, “Why are you my friend?! God, I hate you friend! I wish you were never born!” I usually defriend due to post traumatic stress disorder from over Face Friending. I will go through my friends now and then and think, “Dear god man, did I friend that person? Why did I do that? I don’t think we’ve had one exchange on here. They must think I’m the weirdest person ever for having friended them.” So I’ll eventually delete them. I typically ponder sending a message to them saying, “Hi, I’m Deidre Daly. As you can see by my page, I have a dog named Duke, a niece named Lily and I hate carrots so much that they make me angry. By our ‘mutual friends’, you may be able to tell that we are connected by my sister’s ex’s friend’s mom’s daughter. I friend requested you about a year ago and I now realize that makes me bat shit insane. Therefore; I’ve decided to defriend you. Not because I don’t care about you; although, we’re both aware of the fact that I don’t really know you at all. Rather, I defriended you because I care that much about what you think of me. And I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. Sincerely, Schmeidre Schmaly”.

The last thing, and relatively new to my Facebook anxiety is parents being on Facebook. And by parents I don’t mean my friends who are now parents (which is pretty much all of them), I mean the parents OF my friends. Initially, I get extremely excited every time I see a parent of my friend on Facebook. Then I friend request them. Then I forget about them. Then I post something like, “I want to tongue punch your mother in the fart box”** as my status and wake up at one in the morning a week later with the realization that a parent may have seen this post (assuming they haven’t already hidden me because they don’t care about my posts). However, I do realize the entertainment potential there is to staying on Facebook long enough that I can be that ‘parent’ to my friend's children. I can’t wait until they get old enough to be on Facebook and I can friend request them and chastise them for saying things which are ‘inappropriate’. Who am I kidding? They’ll probably defriend me before I can get to that point.

So this is the sad truth about my Facebook anxiety and why I hate Facebook. I am fully aware that most people don’t think about Facebook ever, never mind think about it neurotically to the point where they are losing sleep. Of course this doesn’t make me less neurotic; instead, it gives me something else to worry about. What kind of a 35 year old woman is that wrapped up in Facebook? Awesome. Facebook, I hate you.

*I credit my friend Ken’s buddy for this phrase. He said last Saturday at which point I threw up a little and then committed it to memory and have been waiting to use it ever since.