It may be too late to say “don’t join” – especially to the >100 of my friends on facebook, who keep joining/becoming fans of these random and funny groups that are out there! Though I wrote about these funny Facebook groups before(very expressive yet random groups) – here’s a further list of more of these random/funny groups! What can I say, if I don’t block these posts coming up in my feed, at least let me list them here!

• My Friends Are My Friends No Matter How They Are !!
• Feeling so hyper but when told to do work, I’m tired;
• I look to make sure the “L” and “R” headphones go in the correct ears;
• i hate getting blanked on msn!!! ¬¬
• Don’t ya hate it when people think they’re betta than you ?
• Dnt H8 Me cos You Ain’t Me!!!
• Dnt Yu Hate It Wen Yur Doin Homework N Yur Mum Keeps Kallin Yu;
• “Yes mum im nearly home!” *Hang up*… shit, i better leave now.
• Naughty stories u’ll wet urself laughing!!!
• Face It Tom, Your Never Gonna Catch Jerry!!!
• Its Not Coz Ur Black.. Its Coz Ur Rude, Loud, And Causing Trouble;
• Facebook Ruined My Relationship!!!!
• Why is ur hed like dat??……….Has God even made dat shape yet :/ ??
• ‘Ohh shit i wasn’t listening, what do we have to do?’
• Mum i got an A in maths!!!! … why didnt u get an A*?!
• “You’re here to learn.” “No, i’m here because it’s the law.”
• instead of doing pointless status’ just tell me to my face .
• Hate standing next to bus doors and they open on you;
• Fine move me, but i’ll just talk to the person you move me next too.
• Your fit. on closer inspection… no.
• I hate it when you think of something really good to say then forget it!.
• ‘Let’s eat Grandma!’ or, ‘Let’s eat, Grandma!’ Punctuation saves lives.
• Don’t tell me the hair’s not mine…I bought it for £19.99 SO IT IS!! KMT!!
• I’m paranoid because the spider I saw five seconds ago isn’t there anymore.
• Don’t worry, I also don’t know what to do while they sing me Happy Birthday;
• I Click “Like” When I Can’t Be Bothered To Comment !
• I don’t care if the spider’s “not hurting anyone”, I want it dead.
• Some Times I Wanna Slap You YOUR SOO ANNOYING;
• Ever pretended to be in music video when you’re walking?
• I hate How Much i LOVE you!
• if i could remember school work like i remember lyrics i’d be like a genius;
• Its So Funni How Girls Fight Ova Man Dat Dnt Even Like Dem;
• Lol has gone from meaning, “laugh out loud” to “I have nothing else to say”;
• People are Getting too carried away with Facebook Groups!

I just realized this – these groups are “R.E.P.R.E.S.E.N.T.I.N.G” the emotions/feelings/statuses of the being of either young ones or people in general. Just like in the old days people used to march on the street with posters / signs about how they felt about their leaders/their decisions/the laws, etc – so it is today: people “march” publicly ONLINE by joining these groups / unjoining the groups, to show everyone else how they feel about things! History repeats itself…

It started with an email from a friend of a friend in Paris. No, that’s not right – the two of them had only a mixture of contempt and indifference for each other. Call it light mutual scorn. But they knew each other, and each had their site with the high-resolution Paris photographs, one with carefully composed art shots and the other with casual slice-of life shots which were essentially journalistic. Of course they mildly despised each other. The one seemed to think the other guy wasn’t a serious photographer, and the other thought the first guy was a pretentious bully, another Atget wannabe. They were not friends. They just knew each other.

But the email said there were some new shots of Paris – cool stuff, take a look. And when you miss the days when it was off to Paris every December for a few weeks alone there, and miss the place on the first day of summer with all the music, you do have to take a look. Sure you can go to Google and click on Maps and pull down the little Street View icon and walk down Rue de la Harpe and see the seedy bistro where you got pie-eyed with some of the locals, but that’s rather crude – the same low-resolution pan that never changes. You want more.

But the problem was that the new shots were on Facebook. The only way to see them was to sign up. And that takes you into the world of social networking, somewhere that someone in their sixties, retired and reclusive, never expected to go. But what the heck – getting set up was easy enough, and it was free, and there were the shots of Paris. And they were cool.

Facebook was the problem. You start out saying a few things about yourself, for reference, and find yourself filling in little categories – political preference, religious affiliation (if any), where you went to school, where you ended up, favorite books or music or whatever, whether you’re married or in a relationship or on the prowl or indifferent and out of the game now, and so on and so forth. Unless you stop yourself you’re soon writing a done-well-and-you-should-be-impressed autobiography – Advertisements for Myself and all that. But you don’t feel like Norman Mailer. You feel a little guilty, like you’re padding your résumé to get that job for which you aren’t really qualified. You know you’re trying to make yourself look good. And if you have to try, well, then you’re not exactly what you say you are, are you?

And then there are the Facebook Friends. You have one – you’re looking at his Paris photographs. But the others some follow. You’ve gone public. Facebook has more than three hundred fifty million active users and half of these users log onto Facebook on any given day, and more than thirty-five million users update their status each day, adding detail to their advertisements for themselves – had a great workout this morning, little Johnny said the cutest thing, check out these photos of the cat today, this makes me mad, this makes me happy, it’s raining here. All this is done in bursts of no more than three hundred fifty words.

And that’s a lot of people out there doing these things. So someone you know, or once knew, or who knows someone who knows you, will send a Friend Request.

You’re curious. You say yes. You want to know what ever happened to so-and-so, and they become your Facebook Friend. And you look at their pictures and read their profile, trying to figure out what to believe, and what is, perhaps, slightly exaggerated, or absurd. And you now see their new postings, sometimes many an hour. There’s a lot of did-this, went-here, saw-this, ate-this, heard-this stuff – all casual running observations from someone you knew once, long ago. It’s very odd, and as one person knows another person who knows another person, your list of Facebook Friends grows. The average user has a hundred thirty of them. But are they friends, in any way that term was previously used?

When you pull up Facebook now you see a long river of casual observations from your own hundred of so – and it’s very puzzling. Why are you reading this? To stay connected? That hardly seems the reason. These people are not a part of your life now, and probably for good reason. And none of this is directed at you. It’s just out there, sitting there. You may have tossed your own offerings on the surface of that river, but you know that wasn’t directed at anyone in particular. You just said something, or pointed at something, or posted a few pictures. And your reason for doing so is the same as everyone else’s. Will someone notice that you exist?

There may be no more to it than that. Sure, sometimes a few people comment on a posting, but no dialog continues for more than few entries, and only in short bursts, as there’s that severe word limit. And really, the whole thing is just not set up to facilitate any sort of extended exchange of ideas between two parties or in a group. Facebook works a different way. Here I am. Yes, there you are. That’s about it. If you actually have something to say to someone in particular you write them an email, or use that antique technology, the telephone (using the part that’s not for taking pictures or surfing the web or using GPS to find the nearest Starbucks). You might even go see them – meet for lunch or something. You don’t use Facebook.

No, Facebook – and MySpace and Twitter and the rest – seems to exist to counter existential absurdist despair, a place to resolve the dilemma of being and nothingness. You can affirm your being, leaving something for all to see that you are not just nothing at all, like the guy in the Camus novel waiting to be hanged and okay with that, as it doesn’t really matter that much. And it exists as a promotional tool – the Los Angeles Times made Dan Neil, the Pulitzer Prize winning guy who writes about cars, get on Facebook, and Slate has their political star, John Dickerson, on Facebook too. All the on-air talent at CNN is on Facebook and most of them on Twitter too. Sure, what they post is just like what everyone else posts – snippets of transitory nothing much. But the idea is to be out there – for people to sign up as Friends or Fans Of. It’s marketing. You want to reach at least some of those three hundred fifty million users. That’s a big market.

But you can’t take it too seriously. This river is wide and long – amazingly so – but it’s less than a millimeter deep, far less. And it’s not the ancient Greek agora – the open marketplace of ideas. There’s no room for those, and not much interest in them anyway. At best it’s a place for poseurs, claiming to have ideas. It’s a great medium or making that claim, as no one will call you on your ideas – no room for that, structurally. Cool – you never have to explain the details.

This is probably why Sarah Palin as this is written has 1,101,227 Facebook Friends, which on her site are relabeled as Supporters. She finds this medium just right for communicating with America, and uses it almost exclusively to do just that. The posts are short and no one much comments on them. And she’s in the habit now of saying things in Facebook style, as with this comment on Obama’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech:

I liked what he said. In fact, I thumbed through my book quickly this morning, saying, “Wow, that really sounded familiar.” I talked in my book, too, about the fallen nature of man and why war is necessary at times, and history’s lessons when it comes to knowing when it is when we engage in warfare. A lot of Americans right now are getting to read my take on when war is necessary.

Gee, Obama read her book and stole her deep thoughts, claiming they were his own. Who knew? But that’s a Facebook kind of off-the-cuff throw-away. Others don’t see it that way – if anything, Obama was doing a complex and subtle riff on the key ideas of that theologian-philosopher Reinhold Niebuhr, and Andrew Sullivan put it this way:

It’s a remarkable address – Niebuhr made manifest. What strikes me about it most of all – and I do not mean this in any way as a sectarian or non-ecumenical statement – is that it was an address by a deeply serious Christian.

Facebook is where you say hey, I’m a deeply serious Christian too, and thought these thoughts long before Obama or Reinhold Niebuhr, whoever he is. And you just say it. And that’s that.

But there’s more to Facebook than its structural enforcement of absolute and utter self-promotional shallowness. There is also something odd about how it redefines friendship, as a concept.

In the Chronicle Review (yes, from the Chronicle of Higher Education), William Deresiewicz explores this in Faux Friendship – a lengthy history of the whole concept of friendship and how it has changed. Deresiewicz is the literary critic who was an associate professor of English at Yale and wrote that book Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets – “an elegant case for the idea that Jane Austen’s encounter with the Romantic poets revolutionized her understanding of human existence.” You know, the “complexity and wisdom of her late novels spring from a new conception of time, marginality, and loss that is thoroughly Romantic.” Yep, she’d have a character say something like this – “I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them.” And another, in Northanger Abbey, say this – “Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.” Deresiewicz is on friendly ground when he writes about friendship.

And Deresiewicz opens with this:

We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all. Already the characteristically modern relationship, it has in recent decades become the universal one: the form of connection in terms of which all others are understood, against which they are all measured, into which they have all dissolved. Romantic partners refer to each other as boyfriend and girlfriend. Spouses boast that they are each other’s best friends. Parents urge their young children and beg their teenage ones to think of them as friends. Adult siblings, released from competition for parental resources that in traditional society made them anything but friends (think of Jacob and Esau), now treat one another in exactly those terms. Teachers, clergymen, and even bosses seek to mitigate and legitimate their authority by asking those they oversee to regard them as friends. We’re all on a first-name basis, and when we vote for president, we ask ourselves whom we’d rather have a beer with. As the anthropologist Robert Brain has put it, we’re friends with everyone now.

And Facebook and its like are only making this worse, as this is not like friendship in the ancient world – “In a world ordered by relations of kin and kingdom, its elective affinities were exceptional, even subversive, cutting across established lines of allegiance.” Think of Damon and Pythias and that sort of thing.

And it’s not like the Christian age that followed:

Christian thought discouraged intense personal bonds, for the heart should be turned to God. Within monastic communities, particular attachments were seen as threats to group cohesion. In medieval society, friendship entailed specific expectations and obligations, often formalized in oaths.

And it’s not like the Renaissance:

Truth and virtue, again, above all: “Those who venture to criticize us perform a remarkable act of friendship,” wrote Montaigne, “for to undertake to wound and offend a man for his own good is to have a healthy love for him.” His bond with Étienne, he avowed, stood higher not only than marriage and erotic attachment, but also than filial, fraternal, and homosexual love. “So many coincidences are needed to build up such a friendship, that it is a lot if fortune can do it once in three centuries.” The highly structured and, as it were, economic nature of medieval friendship explains why true friendship was held to be so rare in classical and neoclassical thought: precisely because relations in traditional societies were dominated by interest. Thus the “true friend” stood against the self-interested “flatterer” or “false friend,” as Shakespeare sets Horatio – “more an antique Roman than a Dane” – against Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Sancho Panza begins as Don Quixote’s dependent and ends as his friend; by the close of their journey, he has come to understand that friendship itself has become the reward he was always seeking.

And it’s not like what followed:

…the growth of commercial society was shifting the very grounds of personal life toward the conditions essential for the emergence of modern friendship. Capitalism, said Hume and Smith, by making economic relations impersonal, allowed for private relationships based on nothing other than affection and affinity. We don’t know the people who make the things we buy and don’t need to know the people who sell them. The ones we do know – neighbors, fellow parishioners, people we knew in high school or college, parents of our children’s friends – have no bearing on our economic life. One teaches at a school in the suburbs, another works for a business across town, a third lives on the opposite side of the country. We are nothing to one another but what we choose to become, and we can un-become it whenever we want.

And the growth of democracy change things too:

We are citizens now, not subjects, bound together directly rather than through allegiance to a monarch. But what is to bind us emotionally, make us something more than an aggregate of political monads? One answer was nationalism, but another grew out of the 18th-century notion of social sympathy: friendship, or at least, friendliness, as the affective substructure of modern society. It is no accident that “fraternity” made a third with liberty and equality as the watchwords of the French Revolution. Wordsworth in Britain and Whitman in America made visions of universal friendship central to their democratic vistas. For Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of feminism, friendship was to be the key term of a renegotiated sexual contract, a new domestic democracy.

So we get this:

Modernity believes in equality, and friendships, unlike traditional relationships, are egalitarian. Modernity believes in individualism. Friendships serve no public purpose and exist independent of all other bonds. Modernity believes in choice. Friendships, unlike blood ties, are elective; indeed, the rise of friendship coincided with the shift away from arranged marriage. Modernity believes in self-expression. Friends, because we choose them, give us back an image of ourselves. Modernity believes in freedom. Even modern marriage entails contractual obligations, but friendship involves no fixed commitments. The modern temper runs toward unrestricted fluidity and flexibility, the endless play of possibility, and so is perfectly suited to the informal, improvisational nature of friendship. We can be friends with whomever we want, however we want, for as long as we want.

But we also get this:

You graduate from college, move to New York or L.A., and assemble the gang that takes you through your 20s. Only it’s not just your 20s anymore. The transformations of family life over the last few decades have made friendship more important still. Between the rise of divorce and the growth of single parenthood, adults in contemporary households often no longer have spouses, let alone a traditional extended family, to turn to for support. Children, let loose by the weakening of parental authority and supervision, spin out of orbit at ever-earlier ages. Both look to friends to replace the older structures. Friends may be “the family we choose,” as the modern proverb has it, but for many of us there is no choice but to make our friends our family, since our other families – the ones we come from or the ones we try to start – have fallen apart. When all the marriages are over, friends are the people we come back to.

But the whole idea is that now “the image of the one true friend, a soul mate rare to find but dearly beloved, has completely disappeared from our culture.” And we don’t expect much:

We have ceased to believe that a friend’s highest purpose is to summon us to the good by offering moral advice and correction. We practice, instead, the nonjudgmental friendship of unconditional acceptance and support – “therapeutic” friendship…

There’s much more, and what he says about the sixties is cool, but the real issue is Facebook, where “the friendship circle has expanded to engulf the whole of the social world, and in so doing, destroyed both its own nature and that of the individual friendship itself.” As in this:

Friendship is devolving, in other words, from a relationship to a feeling – from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic caves, rearranging the tokens of connection like a lonely child playing with dolls. …

Now we’re just broadcasting our stream of consciousness, live from Central Park, to all 500 of our friends at once, hoping that someone, anyone, will confirm our existence by answering back. We haven’t just stopped talking to our friends as individuals; at such moments, we have stopped thinking of them as individuals. We have turned them into an indiscriminate mass, a kind of audience or faceless public. We address ourselves not to a circle, but to a cloud. …

As for getting back in touch with old friends – yes, when they’re people you really love, it’s a miracle. But most of the time, they’re not. They’re someone you knew for a summer in camp, or a midlevel friend from high school. They don’t matter to you as individuals anymore, certainly not the individuals they are now, they matter because they made up the texture of your experience at a certain moment in your life, in conjunction with all the other people you knew. Tear them out of that texture – read about their brats, look at pictures of their vacation – and they mean nothing. Tear out enough of them and you ruin the texture itself, replace a matrix of feeling and memory, the deep subsoil of experience, with a spurious sense of familiarity. Your 18-year-old self knows them. Your 40-year-old self should not know them.

And now “identity is reducible to information: the name of your cat, your favorite Beatle, the stupid thing you did in seventh grade.” And it is also “reducible, in particular, to the kind of information that social-networking Web sites are most interested in eliciting, consumer preferences.” (What kind of car do you drive these days?)

And this seems about right:

They call them social-networking sites for a reason. Networking once meant something specific: climbing the jungle gym of professional contacts in order to advance your career. The truth is that Hume and Smith were not completely right. Commercial society did not eliminate the self-interested aspects of making friends and influencing people, it just changed the way we went about it. Now, in the age of the entrepreneurial self, even our closest relationships are being pressed onto this template.

That’s why some of us, after a few days on Facebook, just don’t go there anymore. The friends aren’t friends, or if they are, they’ll be friends in contexts that seem a bit more real. And really, it’s become a place for Sarah Palin to run a political campaign and CNN and the rest to troll for viewers. And with all that marketing it’s just sad to see people you once knew and distant relatives you’d forgotten and students you once taught, or someone you knew at summer camp when you were twelve, or so they have told you, marketing themselves just like the big boys.

They’re just faces now, surrounded by promotional material. And everyone knows their real friends.

But the pictures of Paris were cool.

Rick Warren turns savvy on Twitter, Twitpic, and Facebook

Saddleback Church pastor and Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren tweets and the tweeps listen … at least 60,000 of them at last count.

Warren, who in just a few months since opening his Twitter account has a hefty chunk of followers on Twitter, regularly posts scripture and thoughts on the popular micro-blog … and throws in photos on Twitpic as well. And those are not the only social media tools he uses. His recent photo post on Twitpic includes the caption:

“In Paris, a 79YR OLD ROMANIAN LADY rushed my taxi window & blurted ‘I’m following u Rick as a FACEBOOK Friend!’”

Just goes to show you that the world is getting smaller all the time!

After searching the Facebook world, these are the BEST Facebook Status Updates for the week of Nov 7th-14th. Enjoy! Want to make the list? Well then, send me your updates.

Don’t be tardy for the status party.

BEST OF:

1. (Name) to all my Facebook friends, thanks for the virtual memories. Without you all, I would only have a studio apartment and seasons 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Quantum Leap on VHS.

2. (Name) another crazy night out last night! My breath tastes like regret.

3. (Name) thanks for NOTHING Farm Town friends. My crops went unharvested and died because of your blatant disregard for my absence from Facebook this past week. I guess you can never really count on anyone…anywhere.

4. (Name) is Facebook stalking my first grade teacher. I just can’t believe that he’s not dead yet.

5. (Name) spent the evening deleting all of my skinny pics off of  Facebook. Now it’s like my 40 pound weight gain never happened.

6. (Name) gave birth to another kid today and no one cares. Why is it so important to my family that I know exactly who the father is? It’s so sad.  Everyone really started taking my birthing skills for granted after the 11th kid. Come on people – Throw me a freakin’ onesie!

7. (Name) why is it that every guy I date never calls me again after he sees my porcelain doll collection? I think it’s nice how all 347 of them surround my bed and keep me safe from evil doers and angry fairies who wish to take my adult teeth from my mouth while I sleep without leaving behind any compensation for me.

8. (Name) is still unsure where the manparts go when guys wear super tight, ultra low-rise women’s jeans. Pete Wentz, I’m looking at you!

9. (Name) is at home from work today with a sick ferret.

10. (Name) went to Vegas and all I got was this lousy 3 foot tall margarita glass that I only drank half of and then urinated in. It may be time to take it off from around my neck, but these damn straps are just so convenient.

What could this guy be thinking???

A. This is how I deal with marital stress.

B. I’m going to choke the gay right out of me.

C. I will be the world’s GREATEST prop comic. Look, I’m a strapping old jock. Ha! I’m hilarious.

D. I spend my Sundays hoping that Monday never comes.

This past week in Wonju FLEW by.

I think things are getting a little easier, and though I still need to work on my classroom management and lesson planning skills, I definitely feel like I am learning fast…and Daniel (my boss) telling me about next month’s vacay definitely helped to boost morale Oh, and I had a fun night during the week meeting some other English teachers (from South Africa) and hanging out with my co-worker Hannah.

Also, speaking of flying, that’s what Sean was doing Thursday morning Hawaii time, to come visit me in Korea! I’ll skip the mundane details of my work week to talk a little about my fun filled weekend in Seoul…

Friday- I get off at 8 p.m. after my last evening class. Pick up some onolicious mandoo from down the street from my school. RUN, literally, home. Shower/eat steaming hot spicy dinner/put on make up/pack in record time (20 minutes). Catch a cab to the Wonju city  ”bahssu tumminal.” Sleep + iPod + play word games for an hour. Wait impatiently on the bus in Seoul traffic for half an hour. Get lost on the subway, for like a minute…then take two subway lines to Hongdae area. Get lost, again, trying to find the hostel (imagine- disoriented me, sober and confused, in the midst of drunken university students, European tourists and loud American military men, with my little duffel bag, trying to find this tiny hostel). Walk with a helpful Korean guy in confused, frustrated state for twenty minutes. Make it to hostel, finally, to meet Sean (who has been waiting for me for two hours)- time I finally arrive to Hongdae: 12 midnight.

I meet the guys at the hostel, a nice group. Sean is all comfortable on his bunk bed, checking his email. He tells me the guys were super helpful and nice to him, and that he had no problem finding the place. We decide to head out for a night on the town. By this time, its about 1 a.m. We walk around for a couple hours, overwhelmed by the neon, then settle for the restaurant/bar downstairs of our hostel building. Order some pupus (a tuna dish recommended by the waiter- also the most pricey on the menu, go figure- with a mug of Korea’s Cass beer).

We were supposed to meet up with my friend Marney’s friend who lives in Seoul, a Canadian named Thomas, but decide to meet up the next day for arting…after an exhausting day of work, travel, and a beer to top it off, sleep sounded beautiful.

Saturday- Wake up an hour early, because Sean set his watch wrong to Seoul time. But it was good- we ended up meeting Thomas right on time haha. We have a quick breakfast at Paris Baguette, and decide to head to Insa-dong for some art perusing. We hit up a good range of galleries–mostly modern, and mostly free. And one disturbing installation involving videos of four white people puking different colors. Very um interesting.

Thomas takes us to a traditional tea place, where Sean orders peach tea, Thomas bamboo shoots tea, and me ginger tea. Plus colorful rice cakes mmhmmm. How cultured right? It was a great experience.

We walk around Insa-dong for a bit…then head back to Hongdae. Decide to meet up with Thomas later that evening. Me and Sean walk around the park, they had a market going on, and eat some amazing Indian food (my fav!) Later, hang out with Thomas’s friends- many which happen to also teach English in Seoul- and later go to a cool cavernous bar for some interesting music/mixed media/shisha, oh and really strong cocktails!

Sunday- We slept in a little, explored the overcast side of Seoul. Had a light bfast and coffee at a gallery (aptly named “The Gallery”), walked around a few shops, art markets, and food places. Hung out with the hostel crew for a bit. Decided to leave early for Wonju. Hung out at a cozy cafe near my school, recovering from the fun weekend- Sean sketching, and me blogging.

Overall, a successful weekend. Part plan, part impulse, and always an adventure. I think I’ll be going again to Seoul for my birthday (my champagne birthday, I’m told- I’m turning 23 on 11/23), which I’m excited for. Thomas offered a place to stay, so sweet, and there’s a Benny Benassi concert plus some disco party in Hongdae that weekend. Sounds fun to me!

Sean leaves on tomorrow, and it will be sad to see him go. It was a fun couple days. He came to visit me at school today, and had lunch with me and the kids…I know they really liked having him there. I know he will miss the good food too (street desserts, like the fish shaped custard bread and Korean pancakes, and $5 mandoo plates). After work tonight, me, Sean, and my co-worker Hannah ate shabu, and went upstairs to some little arcade- even took Korean style neoprint photo stickers I’m sad, but also excited for the many expected visitors my way…Christina in December, Mom maybe in January, Marn in April, Mer/Abb in July, etc etc. I simply don’t have time to be lonely!!!

I am not sure how much importance to put on the fact that Sarah Palin has “accepted” Orly Taitz as a friend on Facebook.   Though everything important that Sarah has written since her resignation as governor has appeared on her Facebook page,  I would love to see her make a commitment about the Obama eligibility movement.     I don’t think politically she is ready to be labeled a “birther,”  but Sarah is full of surprises.

I loved Sarah’s response to Biden’s statement that the only thing Palin knows about energy is: “Drill, Baby Drill.”  Within hours Sarah had a comeback slogan:  “Hoffman, Baby, Hoffman!”

http://thepostnemail.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/palins-bold-move-numbers-eligiblity-lawyer-taitz-among-friends/

I consider Sarah and Orly as very committed to their principles and even if they differed on some issues, they could easily have a mutual admiration society.

Well, Damn!

How dare you send me a freakin passive aggressive “friend request” on fuckin’ Facebook. You wanna be my friend? Really?! You weaselly asshole!

You didn’t seem to give a good Goddamn or a single solitary fuck about what happen to me after you unceremoniously dumped me after months of a relationship and after you watched me cook your ass dinner. Your actions were unwarranted, unfair, unkind, thoughtless and terrible. Those are some great friend qualities, prick.

Sure, a few months ago, I was pleasant when you popped up on my Yahoo IM, with a ‘hey! how ya been’ nearly a year after the fact. And yes, I wanted to know What-the-Fuck and grill your ass like a summer BBQ but I didn’t. By the way, thanks for that mindfuck in the middle of my day. Given your past scumbag actions it wasn’t the biggest surprise that you dis-fuckin-appeared after said chat. Douche!

As a grown ass woman I understand the answer doesn’t change the fact we are not together. And I can move forward, happy in the knowledge I’ve haven’t seen your damn lame ass since and probably wouldn’t, until now.

A Facebook request? This, you fuckwit, is too much.

Guess what? Mr. **** *** ******, mutha fucka. I’ll click ‘accept’ rather than ‘ignore’ for your sorry ass “friend” request if only to write this on your glorious Wall:

Fuck Right The Hell Off You Godamn Soulless Triffilin’-ass Bastard.

Then delete you.

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The idiom “eating crow”  refers to “…humiliation by admitting wrongness or having been proven wrong after taking a strong position” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_crow) and explains the purpose of this entry.  The parallel lies in the belief that eating crow would be as unpalatable as being proven wrong is emotionally difficult.  Well, I have to open my mouth, insert fork full after fork full of this carrion-eating bird, chew, and swallow.  This is extremely difficult for a vegan who can’t imagine letting any form of meat cross her lips.

The lamentation that I posted weeks ago about being snubbed on Facebook?  An over-reaction.  My adoptive Mom added me as a friend at long last!  I danced in circles in my living room!  I hadn’t said anything to her, I was too embarrassed by my sensitivity and insecurity for that level of honesty.  My guess is that as I venture from the protective bubble of passivity that I have created for myself with my eating disorder, I will become more adept at eating crow.  My feelings, thoughts and emotions have all been stuffed, starved, flushed or exercised away for over 23 years.  Choosing to stay present means that I experienced the fears brought to the light as the sand trickled through the hourglass grain by grain before she responded to my Facebook friend request.   I felt that perhaps she didn’t truly care for me as a person, that perhaps she was just interacting with me out of pity as I very publicly struggle with my eating disorder.  As much as I wish that I could, I cannot hide the vacillatory nature of my weight as I alternate between starving myself to perfection and self-obliteration and stuffing my problems into different forms without purging.

The joy I felt when I saw my Mom on my Facebook friend list was only minutely tempered by my embarrassment.  This woman is beautiful, passionate, sensitive and caring; an artist and a scientist as well as being accomplished and well-respected in her field.  I, with what I have lovingly termed my “Southern Un-Charm” am certainly not as sophisticated as the people she typically associates with.  I am also much more evolved than I used to be, becoming a little classier and more cultured day by day.  I find this woman to be a wonderful mentor and her love, support and friendship is a cherished gift.  I feel genuine sorrow for my emotional diatribe born of decades-old baggage, Mom #2.  With love and a heart asking for forgiveness, Daughter #4.

Ha! I got you, bitch!

Poor Mike! He should have known better than to leave his Facebook profile open on someone else’s computer. Usually, I’m pretty unimpressed with jokes that hinge on dudes acting like there’s something inherently hilarious about homosexuality—unless they’re Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd—but this prank is pretty genius. (Side note: How on earth are there that many groups about loving cock??)

Changing around someone’s Facebook profile is the ultimate prank. We all spend way too much time worrying about presenting ourselves in the best light possible on Facebook: listing the right favorite movies and music, displaying a flattering profile pic, writing something funny and pithy in our “About Me” sections. When someone messes with your profile, then, they’re poking fun at your image-consciousness in an extremely public way—and they’re also making sure that an audience of hundreds can immediately see that you just got played.

So, since witnessing a Facebook prank at its finest, I’ve been thinking about other ways to subtly mess with my friends’ Facebook profiles, given the chance. And considering they stored their passwords and leave their bedroom doors unlocked, that chance is most definitely given.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

-       Change her language setting to Icelandic.
-       Re-tag all of the heinous pictures from last week that she immediately un-tagged the second they were posted.
-       Better yet, make one of them her new profile picture.
-       Change her listed AIM screenname to whatever embarrassing SN she had in middle school: MrsJTT, anyone?
-       Reply affirmatively to every single request that’s accumulated on her page since she last denied all of them. That weird kid from down the hall wants to challenge her to a ZombieNinjaPirate duel? It’s on.
-       Change her major to “Arts and Crafts,” or maybe “Gym.”
-       Become a fan of Heidi Montag and express her love in her status message.
-       Have her “like” every depressing, melodramatic status message on her newsfeed.
-       Change her relationship status from “In a Relationship” to “Single.”
-       Create an event for her “First Annual Swingers” party and invite all of her friends. Including her parents.
-       If her parents aren’t already her friends, submit the request. Then invite them to said party above.
-       If she’s a hipster, change her favorite music to the Dave Matthews Band and her favorite books to Twilight and “anything by Dan Brown.” Oh, and I can’t forget to make her quotation lyrics from a Toby Keith song.

Got any other ideas?
Re-thinking leaving that password saved?

You know when you’re on Facebook, just randomly clicking at pictures, and you find yourself looking at stranger’s pictures?

And then you click a new tab away from the Facebook tab, and then like, 10 minutes later you come back to the Facebook tab, and you’re like, who the FUCK is Giuliia DeGeneres, and WHY am I looking at her pictures?

While reading this post – Friendship is Complicated by Jeff Jarvis on Buzz Machine, he references a post by Meg Packard who discusses the complications of “friends” and “friending people” on facebook .

Both of these posts are very applicable because trying to figure out who I want in my social network is something that I have dealt with more and more frequently.  These posts are also from 2007, but I am impressed how relevant they are to October of 2010. 

I have been on facebook since it started in 2006, and since then, I have collected thousands of pictures and over a thousand friends.  I am “friends” with my immediate family, current and former employees, old college coaches, old college friends, friends from childhood and people I only know through social networking sites.

With the broad spectrum that all of my “friends” are in, I wish there was some way to filter out who could see what I wanted them to see.  I don’t want my mom, boss and clients to see old college photos of keg parties or halloween costumes.  And yes, I could untag myself on these, but Facebook is my photo gallery and I want to keep them all on there.

Recently it has been very difficult for me because now that Facebook has become more prevalent with everyone and it not just limited to college students.  My clients are requesting friendship with me.  Family friends are requesting friendship with me.  It is getting harder to ignore these requests.  I typically say that Facebook is personal and I can connect with them on LinkedIn or Twitter, however I don’t want it to hurt my relationship with them by ignoring it.

I know they have special privacy settings, but I think it would be helpful to create an application where you can filter your friends by the relationship you have with them and what they want to see.  It is tough for young professionals who want to keep some things filtered to certain people to have everything in the open.  I know that once a photo is on the internet, it is for public consumption, but I think this would help.

Recently, my Facebook friend count went over 1,000. That number seems really big. I recently did one of those “Facebook friend stats” things and discovered the following information:

In my 1,0002 friends:
11 countries; 36 states are represented
60% are female; 40% are male
57% are single; 43% are taken
58% are democrats; 42% are republicans

Most common name: Rachel (13)
Most common zodiac sign: Cancer (88)
Favorite Music: John Mayer (51)
Favorite TV show: The Office (87)
Favorite Movie: The Notebook (26)
Favorite Book: The Bible (37)
Favorite Activity: Reading (33)

The highest mutual friend number I have is with Mark Nottle: 317. Which supports my idea that most of my friends are through Camp Arnold and/or the Salvation Army.

This is why I am writing this blog about my facebook friends: I LOVE PEOPLE.

Every single time I’ve sent someone a friend request or approved theirs, it’s been with the heart and intention of getting to know them, or even to open up the opportunity for that to happen at some point. Frequently, it doesn’t feel to be the same on the other end. Even though I am time and time again reminded that being someone’s friend on Facebook isn’t always the indicator of a real friendship budding, I still keep trying. So if you are one of the 1,002 friends who have either asked to be my friend or confirmed my request, know that I would really like to be your friend. I don’t collect Facebook friends just for the fun of it, as that is seems like a shallow, unsatisfying thing to do. If you ever sent me a random message or wall post or picture comment, that would make my day. and don’t be weirded out or anything when I randomly message/wall post/picture comment you. Because odds are I think you’re pretty cool.

If we aren’t using social mediums like Facebook, Twitter, etc. to create and build positive relationships that enhance our lives.. what’s the point of signing up in the first place?

PS One of my Facebook friends (who is a real life friend, lucky me!!), Allison Ghorley, is one of the finalists in the Verity Mom competition on VerityMom.com .. she is married to my friend Brandon Ghorley of The BGP (my favorite band). Click on her picture to go to the site and submit a vote for her.. it’s super easy. Then make sure you let me know that you did, so I can thank you!

When you get to work be sure to say “working” or “I am at work” this way all of your friends know not to bother you.

Once you have successfully informed everyone you are working ask yourself how am I feeling right now? Maybe you are tired because you stayed up late playing Farm Town or YoVille, or maybe you are wired because you just drank 5 cups of coffee, no matter what your particular situation is let them know that way they can find out what type of coffee you were drinking or ask you to send them a banana tree on farm town.

If you are in a panic to think of ideas for a status update here are some tips:

• Think of a song you know the words to.
• Tell us what you had to eat.
• Are you hungry?
• Tell us what you want to eat.
• Just hit the keyboard or type random letters. More than likely this will mean something to one of your friends who no longer spell out each word, and how could you blame them? Just think of the time you save if you type grl instead of girl.  That time can now be spent harvesting a crop on Farm Town.

Lots of exciting things happen on a day to day basis it is vital that your friends of aware.

If you become a fan of something on Facebook it not only appears on your wall, it also appears in ALL of your friend’s news feeds. It will even send them a notification via email. This means that if one of your friends is driving down the road their iPhone would automatically vibrate and they would know right then that you are a fan of iced tea. They wouldn’t even have to open the Facebook application or anything.

Another benefit of taking the time to become a fan is that you receive updates about the things you love. This is especially exciting because now everytime you log in to facebook you will have at least 10 new notifications, and that will give you that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Most of us have the dilemma of wanting a new hair style but having no idea what to get. Facebook has solved this problem for us. The application blogthings “What length of hair should you have?” asks some key questions, like If you were an American city, what city would you be?, to really help you draw out your inner style. The application also posts a picture of what you will look like with your new trendy style so all your friends can see themselves. You never know, you might inspire one of your friends to find out what they have been missing!

As I recover more and more from this beastly tangle of anorexia, bulimia, depression and anxiety–I can see how my inherent hypersensitivity to the workings of American society contributed to my obsession with appearance. My obsession with appearance to the exclusion of everything else. People who suffer from eating disorders, like people who struggle with alcohol and drug addiciton, are often behind in their emotional development. Right now, I feel like a teenager who is in the thick of the popularity and coolness wars inherent to junior high.

I have been snubbed on Facebook. Yes, that is what I am blogging about at 7:30 on a Sunday morning, before I go to The Harvest of Peace Celebration at the Shambhala center that I attend. I am sure that this reads pathetically. It is the deeper message behind the snubbing that I am writing about though, so there will be no overly emotive (that’s for you Jared) paragraphs.

My appearance, my place in the American caste system, my public struggle with an eating disorder (there are just some changes that can’t be minimized during the peaks and troughs of both being sick with an eating disorder and during recovery) don’t fit into this person’s definition of “acceptable”. Six months ago, I would have either not noticed that I was being disregarded or I would have rationalized it away. An eating disorder comes with many clever mechanisms to keep one from truly perceiving or feeling anything.

Now I am aware, now I feel, now I understand. It can be challenging to sit with reality sometimes, but, wow, have I gained some great information to work with. Intellectually I knew that America has a caste system that is alive and well. Perhaps it is even more dangerous than the more blatant caste systems of other countries, as it isn’t publicly acknowledged. This is the land where anyone can make their dream come true, where all individuals are given equal opportunity to improve the conditions of their life. And I agree with that statement, to an extent. I won’t elaborate more on that, that isn’t why, at 7:30 on a Sunday morning, I am blogging about being snubbed on Facebook.

I am as guilty as the person who refused to add me as a friend on Facebook. When I get a Facebook friend request, I pause before confirming it and think to myself “Does this person fit into my public image (whatever the hell that is)? Is this person likely to post a status update or picture that could make others get the wrong impression of me” ? There are people that are my Facebook friends, that when I read their status update, I think “Oh. I really don’t need to know the minutae of this person’s day”. I do wish that people were more selective about what they wrote, it is bothersome and overwhelming to me in an already too-busy world to be inundated with, what, when analyzed, is nonsense.

But I wouldn’t “unfriend” anyone for using Facebook as a play-by-play description of their day. My viewpoint is that we are all fascinating creatures in our own right, and that just because I don’t care for drag-racing, mud pulls, Gator football or BBQ pork ribs like many of the people I went to high school with that doesnt’ mean that I don’t care about them as individuals. Will I ever be best friends with these folks? Highly unlikely as there is little common ground other than we are all human beings. Do I have to be their best friend to be their Facebook friend? Absolutely not. I just skim status updates and really read what tells me who they are and how they define peace and joy in their world.

I guess the questions at hand that apply to society are: What is the significance of a Facebook friend? It’s such a public forum, do we need to be concerned about our image when confirming or ignoring Facebook friend requests? Is it truly about self-expression and staying in touch or is it about image cultivation and maintenance?

Can people truly open their hearts and minds and step between all of the levels of the caste system, sincerely, with genuine respect and love for others that aren’t at the level they are in the social strata? Is it wise to do that, and acknowledge it publicly or is it risky? Will others at and above your current rung on the ladder view you as a pathetic idealist, a bleeding heart?.

As I lick my wounds and let the light of awareness shine on them, they heal with astonishing rapidity. My grandfather cautioned me as a young adult that “You will always be able to count your true friends on one hand”. Grandfather, you were so right. For two years I have thought that this person was my friend. She has even dubbed herself as my “Mom”. I believed that we were in the thick of the human struggle together, helping to provide space for the other to explore who she was and what she wanted out of life. I feel right now that our interaction was akin to what she would share if she volunteered at a shelter for the homeless. She could extend herself by spending one-on-one time in the walls of the shelter, but not in a way where everyone who is anyone in her accomplished and prestigious world would know that she tried to understand the plight of the homeless. I am grateful for the ways that she has shown me love and I have a genuine love for her.

The wonder of all of this for me is that the ding in my my nubile self-esteem was minimal. At 36, I am finally growing up.

Last night at the Society for Technical Communication (STC) meeting in Grand Rapids, Mich., my table struck up a conversation about social media.
A few older members, trying to get their feet wet in the digital world, asked why there are different channels for social media: what is each one’s purpose?
I briefly pondered this and then piped up. I proposed the idea that they all serve different purposes depending how you use them.

facebook: An informal social environment originally only for college kids, facebook has been expanded to include all audiences. Now you can even be facebook friends with your mom. This medium is best to use with friends, family, and people who know you on a personal level. Since most users post pictures, comments, etc., they should be aware about their “viewers.” Privacy settings allow you to control who sees your profile, and has even allowed you to make only part of your profile available to certain people. However, there are often times ways around the privacy settings, especially if you both are facebook friends with the same people. Everyone you become facebook friends with can see some or all of the content you post on this site, so make sure you want whoever is viewing your profile to SEE what is on there. I’m sure most people remember when employers were snooping on potential and current employees’ facebook profiles. There are two easy solutions to avoiding this problem: keep your facebook clean or don’t facebook friend your boss. Define your audience and then edit accordingly.

twitter: Most people who were involved int his discussion at the STC meeting found twitter to be of no use to them. “It’s just like a bunch of facebook status updates,” one member said. However, twitter has found a purpose for some users, or else it would not still be around. The social environment of this channel can be as professional or as personal as you like, as long as it’s 140 characters or less. People “follow” you to be able to view your status updates and you can follow others to do the same. On the homepage is the most recent status updates from those you are following. I mainly use this to promote my blog (see the sidebar on the right!), but have a personal account for my personal “tweets.” The one thing that gets me most is when businesses delegate someone the responsibility to manage their twitter, and the person “tweets” about getting their hair done, dropping kids off to school, etc. (I’m not making this up!). If I don’t know you, I don’t want to know that you are painting your nails. Only time will tell to see if twitter tweets itself to death.

LinkedIn: A semi-formal social environment, this is my favorite social media site for professional networking. Users are allowed to create a professional profile including all things that you would include on a resume (you can even upload an electronic version of your resume to save time typing it all in!). You “add to your network” instead of friending or following other users. Users who added you to their network and vice versa are not “friends,” they are “connections.” You can message people, join professional groups, and even ask to be “introduced” to a user via one of your connections. The neatest feature on here is the “recommendations.” Your connections can “recommend” you according to your work experience, education, etc. In turn, their recommendation shows up on your profile. I’m waiting for the day when you no longer submit a resume to an employer, but instead send them a link to your LinkedIn profile.

Can anyone explain the whole friend thing on Facebook?

So, I open a Facebook account and immediately receive an onslaught of “Friend Requests.” While I’m just trying to find out how the service works I’m being challenged to respond to people, some of whom I know well, others not so much and yet others that I thought I had lost contact with? I’m overwhelmed!

Is it rude to ignore or just let their request hang on cyberhold? I have found that Facebook makes it sooooo easy to side step the usual etiquette required by face-to-face communication where I’d be forced/expected to provide an actual response. I can control who accesses my profile/information, I can give limited or full access or even block completely. Nice, now to learn how to do this stuff…I kinda like it in spite of myself. There’s just less pressure. I can be an observer by reading about other people or get in there and post photos and messages myself. However, I also have the option of just ignoring it/them with the hope that I don’t see these people in the flesh while I’m out and about.

The online dictionary defines “Friend” as:

I have a personal cell phone and an email account. I have no access to my personal email at work. In fact, I recently received a hefty bill for checking it via my cell phone during the day…which I will no longer do unless I intend to take out a bank loan. I use these personal resources to keep in touch with my family and friends. They are all nicely listed in alphabetical order. Heck we sometimes meet up and shoot the breeze or visit each other at home…clutch the pearls!

My friends all fall under the definition noted above but Facebookers can have from one to one million “friends” most of whom are NOT friends in the true since of the word. Am I being too literal? There are even services that allow you to purchase friends if you’re not making the cut.

“…targeting social networking sites because of their huge advertising potential…Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool…The simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote,” he added. “The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in.”

The company offers packages for Facebook, the world’s number one social networking site, that start at 1,000 friends up to 10,000 friends at costs ranging from $177 to $1,167.

“All we do is send them a welcome message or friend request from the client. If they decide to go ahead and add that person as a friend or a fan then they will; if not, then they won’t,” Hill told Australian media.

Wow, now this “Friend” concept has become a breeding ground for marketers! They benefit coming and going. I mean these people pay them for friends, that they may or may not get AND they have earning potential by marketing to this targeted audience? Gotta give them credit for thinking this one up. Good gig!

Talking to strangers

I decided to test the waters, I sent a friend request to someone that I had never met. I never expected them to respond in fact I thought that I was crazy to expect that they would actually accept. However, within 20 minutes I was in the inner sanctum of their friendship circle. What a boost to the ego!

Does it matter that some of these people know nothing about me nor I them? Does it matter that we may never meet up? Does it matter that if we cross paths that neither of us is likely to step forward and scream “OMG! We’re Facebook friends!” The answer to all of these so far seems to be a resounding “No!” and no one cares. I guess it’s because that’s not what it’s about or as my friend told me today “That’s not how we do it!”

Maybe Dear Auntie Social should just lighten up and go with the flow but my novice spidey senses tell me that although Facebook is many things to many people it seems to be, for the most part, a numbers game. A popularity contest. Get that friend number up or you’ll be relegated to the B-list. Your profile will be that of the kid who always gets picked last for dodgeball. And NOONE wants to be that kid…so the clicks go on.

BTW – On a somewhat related topic I can’t end this post without a nod to Miss Jody Watley and her classic song (the original AND remix) “Friends” It’s an oldie AND a goodie!

This is what I love about Facebook: getting little tidbits of news each day from a wide collection of friends, family, and people I kind of remember from high school. And that, according to research by social scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, could be a key factor in my happiness.

Christakis and Fowler’s study used data from the Framingham Heart Study, which has tracked data on the same 15,000 people for over 50 years. (Clive Thompson’s article in The New York Times Magazine this Sunday tells the whole story.) The short version is that their research supports the idea that obesity, drinking, smoking and even happiness are contagious, and can spread through three degrees of influence. In other words, you affect not only your friends, but your friends’ friends’ friends.

“If you want to be happy, what’s most important is to have lots of friends,” Thompson reports. “Historically, we have often thought that having a small cluster of tight, long-term friends is crucial to being happy. But Christakis and Fowler found that the happiest people in Framingham were those who had the most connections, even if the relationships weren’t necessarily deep ones. The reason these people were the happiest, the duo theorize, is that happiness doesn’t come only from having deep, heart-to-heart talks. It also comes from having daily exposure to many small moments of contagious happiness.”

This is exactly what you get on Facebook. I relish knowing that my dear friend Janneke is “soaking in the hot tube with a glass of wine after a good workout,” and that my sister Amanda has “located the girls’ red slider turtle that escaped from the tank and has been missing all day.” But it’s not just the easy, day-to-day connections with those you’re closest to. It’s also knowing that my client Betsy and her daughter Julia “just made a blueberry-peach pie,” and that a photographer friend who grew up in South Georgia is spending a Saturday “with his 97-year-old grandfather, who’s considering the purchase of a new tractor.” It makes me glad to see that my high school classmate Rebekah is “thankful for many things about my 88 yr young father in law: he comes to my kitchen everyday for lunch and always leaves it much cleaner than I did,” especially knowing she recently lost her own father (which I would never have known if it weren’t for Facebook updates).

Facebook updates are not always happy news. Sometimes updates are about my childhood friend John Scott ending up in the ER after getting “my clock cleaned by the goal keeper in geezer soccer,” or that Scott Fullager, the nicest guy in the world,  is stuck in an airport on his birthday because it “looks like no flights home — weather, weather. Great!”

But according to Christakis and Fowler, “happiness is more contagious than unhappiness.” Each happy friend can increase your happiness by 9 percent, but the grouches only pull you down by 7 percent. So by maximizing your number of contacts, the happy and unhappy moods net out for a positive on the happy side.

The three degree factor may be why it’s so fascinating to see what people are writing on your friends’ walls, when you don’t even know those people at all. I’ve never met my friend Janneke’s neighbor, but I like knowing that her neighbors’ dog groomer also works for Janneke’s parents. (I especially like Janneke’s response about being glad to know who’s been keeping her parents so well-groomed.)

LinkedIn and Twitter don’t provide the same material for happiness, in my experience. LinkedIn is too dry. A useful network, but a little like sifting through a big stack of resumes. Twitter is such a fast-flowing river that it’s tough to keep up with any one person. What you find on Facebook is a small town, although a small town with no geographical boundaries. For many of us, Facebook is the new Framingham.

So I was in the pub recently and a girl comes over and starts talking to me about a facebook app we both use. Why??? Don’t get me wrong she was lovely but like, I dont know her from adam. What the hell was I meant to talk to her about?

month or so ago, the friend of a friend — let’s call her Peggy — requested to be my Facebook friend. Now, I’d never met Peggy before; in fact, I only recognized her name because of a group that she had set up  – a group of which our mutual friend was a member. But I accepted Peggy’s Facebook friendship because, well, why not? Who cares.

Well, as it turns out, *I* care. I care, because Peggy persists in posting the most obnoxious, self-important, self-indulgent status updates. They drive me bonkers. Yes, I said “bonkers.” That’s how awful it is.

And I know, I KNOW I could just do away with her by clicking “Hide” on my Facebook homepage, thereby instantly deleting her from my Facebook existence. But, well, what can I say… I guess some sick part of me receives some sick kind of sick pleasure in mentally kickboxing her profile picture every time it pops up and I read her heart-laden status updates. Which, by the way, are FREQUENT. She’s the kind of person who updates merely for the sake of updating: “Eating lunch.” “Work.” “Store.” “Shopping.” “Shitter.”

OK, to be fair, the word count of her status updates is generally more than 1. Annoyingly more, actually. Oh, and I’ve never actually seen the word “shitter” come out of her perky little profile mouth. But you get my point. And, now that I think about it, I’d really prefer that she inform me she’s on the shitter rather than seeing all the other shit she spews.

But maybe I’m just in a bad mood.

Maybe I haven’t had enough Vitamin E.

Maybe you’ll all tell me that I’m a Bitter Betty and I need to be less judgmental and more pleased that certain people in the world are happy and loved and able to express it. (*ahem*)

But… seriously, she REALLY annoys me.

Here’s why…

AN ASSORTMENT OF PEGGY’S FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES TAKEN FROM THE PAST WEEK:

*Note: names have been changed.

Home relaxing missing my husband already He JUST got home and he’s gone again (September 4 at 6:15pm)

Back home…last night home alone! ♥ My husband is on his way home, but won’t get back into town until atleast noon tomorrow! (September 7 at 8:21pm)

Heading to work…Yayyyyyy, [Cletus] should be back home by the time I get out of work ♥ (Tue at 6:21am)

I’m looking at my beautiful yellow tea roses my husband got me tonight. He’s FOREVER surprising me with flowers JUST BECAUSE…I LOVE YOU honey ♥ (Tuesday at 9:35pm)

Sitting eating fab, expensive lunch provided by one of our Reps…thanks [Alexis] (Wed at 12:49pm)

Going out to dinner w/my husband ♥ and then see if we can find him a new laptop. His broke last week while on the road and he needs something to be able to chat with me online while he’s on the road (Wed at 5:57pm)

Eating dinner. [Cletus] got a new laptop that should b smoking fast! Top of the line! (Wed at 8:00pm)

Eating lunch…Another fab restaurant paid for by fantastic patient! (Yesterday at 1:12pm)

Bought a new pair of shoes and Apple Bottom Jeans…they obviously run small because I’ve never had to buy a pair of size 7 jeans in my life, lol…Size 5 is the highest I’ve worn (Yesterday at 4:28pm)

Good morning everyone I have the most Romantic and Sweet husband ever ♥ …Wednesday night I came home from work and there was a dozen red roses waiting for me. Last night, I went to get into bed and when I pulled back the covers, there was a card “To my beautiful wife” and inside the envelope was one of the most beautiful cards that [Cletus] has ever gotten me. ♥ ♥ ♥ (13 hours ago)

Did you get all that? No? Well, here are some translations, just in case.

TRANSLATIONS:

1. I cannot survive alone. DON’T MAKE ME LIVE ALONE. And if I *AM* alone, you better freakin’ send me flowers and/or gifts to remind me that you’re thinking of me constantly and that I’m awesome. And you SURE as hell better be able to afford a pimped-out laptop to Skype with me 24/7 because, in case I haven’t stressed this enough: I CANNOT BE ALONE.

2. Actually, even when you’re IN town, you should probably leave me an expensive array of gifts because your mere presence is not enough. Oh, and because I need to brag to all my “friends” and make them feel like their significant others are cheap-@ss, inadequate losers. If they even HAVE a significant other.

3. Also, I’m tiny. I’m tiny, even though I seem to be constantly gorging on the VERY EXPENSIVE lunches showered on me by my patients and reps. If Nelly wants me to buy his jeans, he better size them down. ‘Cuz I ain’t no size 7.

4. In conclusion: I CANNOT BE ALONE. MY LIFE RULES. YOURS DOES NOT.